The Creeping (7 page)

“Oh my God, are you guys okay? They wouldn't let me through or tell me anything. It's a police state out here,” Michaela says, glaring at the uniform over her shoulder.

Zoey's eyes don't move from Cole, who can barely contain herself from the full-on rapture attack she's having. She points her cell at the flashing lights to snap a photo. I want to tell Zoey that Cole doesn't get what's just happened; she doesn't feel the weight of it. “You are not posting pics of this,” Zoey says, a death threat for disobedience implicit in her tone. Cole mutters a confused apology as Zoey shoulders by her and tucks me in the backseat of my car.

My eyelids are heavy, too heavy to resist; I cave to delicious nothingness. The darkness floods the car, and only after ten or fifteen minutes do I blink to focus on the windshield. The swoosh of the wipers brings me back to the land of the living. Cole watches me from the front seat. We must be cutting through neighborhoods, since a wash of light illuminates her blond mane in intervals as we pass under streetlamps. Cole chews her lip as my torso rocks at the slight pumping of the brakes, signaling that Michaela's driving. My head's cradled in Zoey's
lap, and her fingertips are tracing tiny shapes on my temple.

“I am so, so sorry, S. I didn't realize—I would never . . .” Cole trails off. My hand fumbles at the center console, trying to pat her arm.

“Hey, sleepyhead.” Zoey's face is a moon blotting out the rest of the world as she hangs over me. “There's nothing to worry about. We're taking you home. Michaela told Detective What's-His-Face that he could talk to you in the morning.”

“Mmmkay,” I mumble. I let my eyelids flutter shut again, relieved that I can return to the realm of nothingness. They reopen briefly as Dad tiptoes up the stairs, carrying me like he hasn't since I was a baby.

Hushed voices. The creak of the door to my bedroom. The squeak of my mattress's coils compressing under weight. Soft-sounding words float to me from down a very long tunnel. I swat the sound away, letting their tinny ring fade as sleep pulls me under.

The morning is bright. Too bright for half past six, but I can't coax myself back into that sleepy dreamland where the eeriness of last night is awash with honeyed light and the fluttering of butterfly wings. The rumble of a newscaster's baritone wafting from downstairs hypnotizes me, and before I can even change from the crumpled, filthy thing I used to call a dress, I gallop down the stairs and sink in front of the TV as though my life depends on it. Maybe it does. I shake my head violently to shoo away the morbid thought.

“Morning, Pumpkin,” Dad calls from the kitchen. Dishes clatter against the counter; he lets a frying pan clang on the gas stove. Of course he's in the kitchen, concocting a meal that he thinks will be
an antidote for all this trouble. Dad was raised by his nana, who was a strict believer in the cult of comfort food. She didn't believe in an ailment that couldn't be cured with her fried green tomatoes or apricot streusel. Screw you, cancer. She'd kill the nasty disease by adding more habaneros. Although Dad is a reasonable guy—and Nana actually did die of cancer—his first instinct is always to run to the kitchen for solutions.

“Morning, Dad.” I turn all my attention back to the balding, overly tan newscaster. The Oompa Loompa is being broadcast from the edge of Old Savage Cemetery. The ticker on the bottom of the screen recounts short, abbreviated details from last night. With each I feel less and less hungry.
Jane Doe found in cemetery. Possible connection to eleven-year-old cold case. Victim of cold case discovered body last night.
They're calling
me
a victim. Am I? Everyone always says I'm lucky. My mouth goes dry when I think that people might be talking about me like I'm broken. The newscaster waxes on, spewing details of Jeanie Talcott's disappearance. There are crime scene techs in white plastic suits scurrying around in the background of the picture. It makes the cemetery look alien. Like the awfulness is happening on a different planet with astronauts. I wish.

“The body was found yesterday evening at approximately half past eleven. The sole survivor of the Jeanie Talcott abduction made the discovery,” the newscaster drones on. I glare at him through the screen. I did not make the discovery. Tara Boden did. But I guess that's not the spooky coincidence they're after. Isn't it horrible enough? “Events of yesterday evening unfolded during a fluke storm.” The
reporter presses his ear, listening to his radio feed. A smug smile tugs at his mouth. “My meteorologist has just informed me that a similar summer storm occurred on the night of Jeanie Talcott's abduction. Possibly another strange connection between the crime eleven years ago and the recovered body.” My stomach lurches, and I've completely lost my appetite.

Fifteen minutes later I'm watching the same reel as Dad puts a piping-hot stack of pancakes on the coffee table in front of me. I smother my breakfast in syrup, hoping to make it irresistible. I take an unseemly bite; so big I can barely chew with my mouth shut. But there's no fooling my stomach. The news footage segues to clips of Savage residents reacting to last night's discovery. An elderly woman with a hooked nose and curlers in her hair crosses herself with her right hand over and over again. The newscaster interviewing her asks if she suspects cult involvement, since the discovery of the little girl's body in the cemetery could be construed as religious sacrifice. The woman grabs hold of the wooden crucifix around her neck and rushes back into her house, slamming the door behind her. I nearly choke at the mention of cults.

“You want to talk about last night, Pumpkin?” Dad asks, his own mouth full of food, and syrup staining his lips. Rather than answer, I motion for him to dab with his napkin. “Just as well.” He shrugs. “I've seen it all on the news, and Detective Shane called last night to brief me. Speaking of Shane, he'll be here at eight thirty for your statement.”

I nod without making eye contact. I'm relieved that Dad gets why I don't want
to rehash everything with him this morning. How could I when I barely understand what happened myself? What I do understand is that I acted insane last night, clawing through a stew of mud and bones. I did not survive eleven years of Jeanie aftermath by going nuclear. I can't imagine what it is, but there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. No cosmic voodoo, no monsters, no crazy cults seething under the surface of Savage.

I shove the panic down so that the hotcakes don't find their way back up. I succeed in polishing off a second bite before Jeanie's face flickers before me. With all the gore of last night, I forgot that I finally recovered a memory. Not that I've been sitting around waiting for the memories to be salvaged. There wasn't a mash of severed silhouettes, or a jumbled sequence of events, or dialogue so garbled that it's a foreign language, floating in my mind. My memory wasn't just a featureless landscape, it was a black sea—liquid, shapeless, and azoic. I resigned myself to having lost those years, and I haven't been crying about it. My idiot brain just couldn't leave well enough alone.

The sight of Jeanie's pale face, freckled from the summer sun, contorted in fear as blood so dark it's black crawled down her forehead, doesn't give me peace. Would it give her parents peace? Or Daniel? Doubtful. Her parents convinced themselves a long time ago that Jeanie either went painlessly or was growing up somewhere off in the horizon with a picture-perfect family who loved her. It was only ever Daniel who was eaten up by the wondering. That seems saner than hiding from the truth and pretending that the sky is full of rainbows and that child molesters don't exist. I guess what made
Daniel desperate and crazy was what made him saner than his parents. How unfair is that? Not for the first time, I feel a stab of pity for him.

So what would be the use of me telling the cops what I remember? Knowing that something or someone hit Jeanie's head and that she peed her pants in terror wouldn't help them solve the case. Anyway, I might be wrong. Even as I entertain the tempting thought, I don't buy it.

Dad leans forward and taps me on the nose. “Earth to Stella. Did you hear me, Pumpkin? I said I have to go into the office today.” Worry twists his mouth, and his graying eyebrows nearly touch, they're so drawn.

I shake the jumble from my head. “Sure, Dad. No worries.”

“You'll be okay here? You could always come into the office with me. I'm sure we could find an empty desk and a computer for you to mess around on.”

“I'll be completely, totally, utterly fine.” I nod to emphasize my point. “I'm sure Zo will come over.”

He clears the plates from the coffee table and carries them clanking to the kitchen. “All right, but call if you need anything. Remember that the police will handle this and that you don't have anything to worry about. I'm sure your mother would like to hear from you.” I roll my eyes. If she wanted to hear from me, wouldn't she just . . . oh, I don't know . . . call? A minute later he waves from the front door, leather briefcase in one hand, a coffee mug in the other that still has my mother's lipstick staining the rim. No matter how many times
I run it through the dishwasher, I can't erase the red traces of her. Despite them, or maybe because of them, Dad has sipped his coffee from that mug every morning for five years.

I stay curled on the carpet in front of the TV, legs drawn up to my chest, as I text Zoey. I hit send as a female newscaster with a velvety drawl interrupts Mr. Oompa Loompa's interview.

“This just in,” she buzzes excitedly, her shellacked blond curls frozen in place like a helmet. “The county coroner has confirmed that Jane Doe has been dead no more than thirty-six hours. Cause of death is trauma to the head. Medical experts estimate Jane Doe to be between five and six years old. Please be advised that the picture we are about to show is of a graphic nature, but in an effort to identify this little girl, we have decided to broadcast it.” The feed to the blonde is cut, leaving only a photograph taken by the coroner.

The girl's eyes are closed and her skin is pale. She lies on a sterile stainless-steel table, her body covered by a papery blue sheet. Her hair is damp, arranged so it covers the wound that severed her scalp from her head, but the red locks are unmistakable. She looks exactly like Jeanie. I jump to my feet but only have time to reach the kitchen before I retch my two bites of breakfast into the sink.

I
'm clean and dressed a minute before Detective Shane pounds on our front door. I used up all the house's hot water cowering on the slick tile floor of the shower, trying to flush the similarities between Jeanie and Jane Doe from my mind.
Coincidence
. I say it over and over, hoping to drum it into the universe, hoping to make it true.

“Morning, Stella,” Shane says as I swing the front door open wide and step back for him. “Your dad said he'd be at work this morning. He already take off?”

“A little while ago.”

He follows me to the living room, where I curl in the corner of our large floral couch. It's one Mom bought the year she left. She used to say the flowers looked like birds that were trying to escape through the window. I thought that sounded like a fairy tale at the time. Now I think I should have taken the hint. She was looking for her own escape from us. I keep meaning to make Dad replace it, but he never has time to shop for a new one.

“How you doing this morning? Sleep any?” he asks, folding his long limbs into Dad's leather recliner.

I ignore his questions. “Why isn't Detective Rhino Berry here?” I've called Detective Frank Berry “Rhino” since I was seven. I was going through a major Serengeti phase when they came to question me that September. All I wanted to talk about were safari animals. Berry told me to call him Rhino from then on. Shane drops his gaze to his boots, cemetery mud still caked on their soles. “Where is Frank?” I repeat, stiffening on the couch.

“Ugh.” He rakes his hands through his thinning hair. “He had a heart attack two months ago. Then another three weeks back.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “It finished him off, kid.” My stomach plummets again, but I know I won't vomit. Nothing's left in there.

“But he was only fiftysomething,” I whisper. “Not much older than my dad.”

Shane heaves a sigh and pats his shirt pocket absentmindedly. I can make out the shape of a pack of cigarettes. “This job . . .” He trails off.

“Unsolved cases,” I supply. I've grown up watching the strain of a cold case on these two men, seen the years round their shoulders forward, the stress coat their hair in white like a fine dusting of snow.

“But enough of that and back to business.” Shane straightens up, puffs his chest out. “I'm lead detective on the Jane Doe case for obvious reasons, so let's get down to brass tacks.” Shane speaks with a drawl that elongates his vowels and makes waste of consonants. He
got the accent growing up in a big city in the south. I told him once that he's crazy to live in Savage over a place with sun year round. He didn't deny it. He just said that moving to be a cop in Savage, where his dad's side lived for four generations, seemed like an adventure at the time. I don't like to think about why Shane stays. I don't want to think that it's unfinished business like Jeanie's unsolved case that he can't walk away from.

He draws a notepad from his coat pocket, and I tell him everything. Well, my version of everything. I leave out Daniel, because if Shane doesn't know he's in town yet, it's not for me to stir up more trouble for Jeanie's brother. Yes, I realize I need to watch my back. Live like a paranoid schizo until he leaves town again. That I can handle. I also leave out the memory of Jeanie. Everything else, cross my heart, I am honest about.

“The little girl looks like Jeanie,” I say once he's stowed his tablet. “I saw her picture on the news.” He caps his pen like it requires a lot of concentration, but I know he's stalling for time. “Does this have something to do with her? I thought you said whoever took her didn't live here.” My voice trembles. So much for staying calm. “Shane,” I plead. “I'm really frightened. Say something. Have I been walking around smiling at the guy who took Jeanie?”