Little monsters, p.9
Little Monsters, page 9
“Of course! We spoke yesterday. Everything all right?”
“Um, I don’t think so.” I press a hand to my chest. Breathe. “I’m at Sparrow Hill. I went inside the barn, and there’s blood in there.”
The line falls silent. I feel that word crackle between us. Blood.
Knepper’s voice sobers. “How much blood?”
The sound of a twig snapping. I whirl around. Nothing there.
“Kacey, you there?”
“Yeah. Um, there’s a…smear of blood. It’s dry.”
The line falls silent. I hear clacking, at a keyboard, before Knepper speaks again. “I’m gonna need you to just simmer while I send someone over, okay? Can you head back down the hill for me? Wait by the road?”
Something glints at my feet, catching my eye, and I bend down for a closer look. The pendulum. Bailey must have dropped it on our way out the other night. I pick it up and put it in my jacket pocket.
“Yeah,” I tell Ellie Knepper. “I can do that.”
One hand on the pendulum in my pocket, I go back into the barn, pick up the abandoned tea lights from our séance, and take them outside. I bury them in a drift of snow under the closest tree.
—
I’m at the bottom of Sparrow Hill. The sun is at a forty-five-degree angle to my face. A flock of geese fly overhead, their honks volleying back and forth. I’ve been standing here for a while. I thought about going home and waiting for the police there, but Ellie Knepper said not to move.
My phone says it’s almost seven. No messages from Ashley or my dad. I picture Ashley over the counter at Milk & Sugar, licking the pad of her thumb and counting out change to start the register off. She didn’t even notice I was gone when she left for work. She must have thought I was still sleeping after a night of worrying about Bailey and didn’t want to disturb me.
The crunch of tires on snow. A sheriff’s cruiser bumps along, hugging the shoulder even though Sparrow Hill is a one-lane road. As it gets closer I can make out a walrus of a man with a white-blond mustache behind the wheel.
He cuts the engine. Pours himself out of the car and makes his way toward me.
“Sheriff Bill Moser.” He sticks out an enormous gloved paw.
The sheriff. I called the sheriff away from the search for Bailey.
“Kacey Young.” I shake Moser’s hand.
Bill Moser frowns. “I thought Ellie said Ashley Markham’s daughter called.”
“I’m her stepdaughter. Different last names…”
Moser turns pink. “Well, let’s see what we got here.”
Moser starts the trek up the hill and I follow, keeping a polite pace alongside him.
“So,” he huffs. “How old are ya?”
“Seventeen.”
“Ah, so you’re a junior.”
“Senior.”
Moser stops to take a breath. “I got a great-niece your age, goes to BFH. You know Bridget Gibson?”
I nearly trip over my feet. Suddenly it’s clear why Ellie Knepper seemed hell-bent on not discussing Cliff Grosso. He’s the sheriff’s great-niece’s boyfriend.
“I know Bridget,” I say. “She’s in my grade.”
“So. Whatcha doin’ all the way out here, alone? Considering what’s going on.”
A warning flares in my brain, telling me not to say anything about Chloe Strauss and the bloody woman. “Morning walk. I live down the road.”
Beside me, Moser wheezes. “Ya walked all the way up to the barn?”
“I thought I heard something. Like an animal. So I came up to look inside.”
I can’t tell if the sheriff doesn’t buy my story or if he’s asking all these questions for the sake of asking. He keeps his eyes on the ground. People here don’t like unpleasantness. They look their deer in the eye and apologize before shooting.
It’s likely why Moser hasn’t said anything about what happened up here all those years ago.
“The blood,” I say. “It’s like, smeared on the wall. And there’s some on the ground”
“Well, we’ll check it out.”
I hang back when we get to the top of the hill, watch as Moser sputters over to the barn. He leans against the entrance, catching his breath. “You know, there’s a lot of animals up here,” he says. “The blood could’ve come from one of them. You said you heard an animal, huh?”
The blood drains from my head. Lying was bad, but I’m already in it.
Moser collects himself. Enters the barn. His voice echoes off the walls. “Yup, lots of hunting animals up here. Foxes, stoats, ermines, coyotes. Even saw a bobcat once.” A beat of silence. And then: “Oh jeez. That’s not good.”
—
I’m sitting in the front of Moser’s cruiser. No need to freeze half to death, he said. Just promise not to drive off on me. A nervous chuckle. I’ve been sitting here for over an hour. Lauren and Andrew should be awake by now; if they’ve noticed I’m not in my room, they probably think I’m at the café working. I gave one of the deputies Ashley’s cell phone number, but he must not have called her yet.
The cruiser’s vents blast hot air in my face. I press a hand to the cool window. My socks are damp. The deputy Moser called for backup took my boots and wandered off, sealing them in an evidence bag. To eliminate tread marks, he’d explained. I’ll get them back eventually, he said.
I peel off my socks and slip my feet into the paper booties the deputy gave me. Drape the socks over the dash, hoping the heat from the vent will dry them.
Tread marks. We walked all over Sparrow Hill Friday night. The snow’s covered our footsteps outside, but inside the barn—the tread marks from my boots won’t match my story that I only stepped inside the barn today. If they find the other sets of footprints, they’ll know I’ve been to the barn before. With three other people.
But there should be a fourth set, too. From whoever left the blood there. The thought calms my nerves, although I can’t put my finger on the reason why.
Two more cars—one cruiser marked WISCONSIN STATE POLICE K-9 UNIT, one black with tinted windows—come down Sparrow Road. The drivers each do a three-point turn to park on the same side as Moser’s cruiser.
A uniformed man in a wide-brimmed hat steps out of the state police cruiser, accompanied by a woman who leads a German shepherd on a leash. When they pass by the cruiser, I catch a glimpse of the words on the dog’s orange vest: SEARCH AND RESCUE.
I fix my eyes on the black car. Its driver is faceless behind the windshield.
My hands fog up the screen of my phone. I wipe the sweat off the screen. Maybe I should tell someone why I really came up here—Chloe Strauss said there was a bloody woman. Even if Chloe was full of shit, there’s real, actual blood in the barn now.
The slamming of a car door jolts me. The driver of the black car finally steps out: a man, probably midforties. Curly hair slicked down, cheekbones for days. He’s wearing a suit, no jacket. His gaze rakes over the scene, resting on the windshield of Moser’s cruiser. Making eye contact with me.
I shrink into the seat. Look down. There’s a lima bean–sized tear in the upholstery near my thigh.
Minutes later. Rapping at the window. Moser’s face, his breath fogging up the glass. He motions for me to come out. I hesitate. “That guy took my boots.”
“Oh. Yes, he did.” Moser makes a phlegmy noise. He waves the man in black over to us. I turn in the passenger seat as Moser clamps a hand down on my shoulder. “Detective, this is Kacey Young.”
I didn’t know Broken Falls had detectives. But then, the man doesn’t look like he’s from Broken Falls. He doesn’t introduce himself. “Good to meet you, Kacey. Can you tell me what happened this morning?”
No accent there. Definitely not from Broken Falls, then. FBI? “I—told Sheriff Moser. I was out for a hike. I went up to the barn, and I saw the blood.”
The detective tugs a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket, holding eye contact with me as he slides a hand into one of them. A shiver rips through me.
“You’re aware there’s a girl your age missing?” The latex glove snaps against his wrist.
“She’s my friend,” I say.
The detective’s eyebrows lift. “I didn’t know that.”
The sheriff turns pink. “Well, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t either.”
I think I spy a bead of sweat above his mustache. I don’t like the way the detective is looking at me. “Bill, could you check to see how the road blockade is coming along?”
Moser frowns and putters off. When he’s out of earshot, the detective squats so we’re at eye level. “Kacey, I need to know, were you out here looking for Bailey when you found the blood?”
“What?” The sounds on top of the hill roll around in my head like pinballs. Shouts back and forth. Radios crackling.
“Kacey, look at me, sweetheart. I’m over here.” He waggles a finger in front of his face. I bite back the urge to swat it away. “Why did you come up here?”
“I just did. It’s quiet up here. Sometimes I come to get away and think.”
He nods. I can’t tell if he’s buying the grief-stricken-friend thing. “See, Kacey, if you have a reason to believe that Bailey might be up here, I need to know. You won’t be in trouble. You understand the most important thing right now is finding her, right?”
My toes clench in the paper booties. “Of course I know that.”
Barking, up on the hill. Frenetic, loud, found something barking. The detective acts like he can’t hear the dog, but I can see it on his face: the slightest quiver in his upper lip. “I’m gonna need you to sit tight for a minute. I’ll be right back.”
I watch the detective trot up the hill, meeting the deputy who took my shoes and two other officers.
The deputy says, loud enough for me to hear: “We called the crime scene unit from Madison to come swab the blood.”
One of the other officers, a woman, says: “You think it’s gonna match what we found on those clothes yesterday?”
My blood freezes. I forget I’m in paper shoes and stumble out of Moser’s cruiser. Yell over to them: “You found bloody clothes? Where?”
Three heads prick up. The detective turns to look at me, then back at the big-mouth deputy. Nice job, asshole.
“Kacey, why don’t you get back in the car so you don’t get frostbite.”
I can’t move. “I heard her—how much blood was there? Is Bailey dead?”
The detective drops his voice. “Please get her out of here.”
The deputy who took my shoes starts coming toward me. A flap of panic in my chest. Cornered.
“C’mon, sweetheart.” When the deputy grabs me by the elbow, something in me snaps. Everything I’ve been tamping down comes flowing up.
“Get the hell off me.” The voice doesn’t even sound like mine. It belongs to the ugly thing that lives in me. The creature that goes berserk when it’s cornered. One I haven’t seen since I left New York.
“Hey!” The deputy steps back, but he doesn’t let go.
I start to scream. “Don’t grab me—get off.”
More shouting—the other deputy, the woman, comes running toward us. Everything goes black—if I fight back, I’m going to be arrested for assaulting a police officer. I let my body go limp and I fall to the snow.
I’m not here anymore—I’m in my mom’s old apartment, I’m lying at the bottom of the stairs, and all of the fight is leaving my body.
“Get off her.” A firm voice.
Two pairs of hands release me. I regain my breath, numb to the cold seeping through my thin pants. Off to the side, Moser is watching me, his jaw open, his stoats, foxes, and ermines forgotten.
I am the only animal up here.
CHAPTER NINE
Sheriff Moser insists on driving me home, even though navigating the blockade the police have set up takes as long as it would have taken me to walk.
My father answers the door. He’s in his scrubs; he lives, breathes, and sleeps in them. I’m the one with the last name Young, but my father looks like a well-preserved blond frat boy. A college student playing doctor in those scrubs.
He looks like he must have when he met my mom, a waitress at a hole-in-the-wall wings place in Buffalo, where he was getting his degree in pharmacology.
My father’s eyes move from me to Sheriff Moser, and his jaw goes slack. “Kacey. Are you okay?”
My teeth are chattering and my feet are numb. “I n-need to warm up.”
My father’s hand goes to his chin. Runs a thumb along his jaw nervously as he turns to Moser. “What on earth happened?”
I can’t stand around and hear how the sheriff fumbles to relay my lousy version of why I was in the barn. Why I was at a crime scene. I rush past him, not even bothering to take off my jacket.
I’m so cold I feel like I’m drunk. I stumble into the bathroom and strip. Turn on the faucet and wait until the water starts to steam. I sit in the bathtub and pull my knees to my naked body as the tub fills with hot water. It shoots up my nose, making me choke and sputter. I rotate the handle all the way to the right until the water scalds my skin, until it’s almost unbearable. But maybe if I stay like this for long enough, I’ll disappear into steam too.
When I burn all the cold from my body, I get out of the tub. Lock my bedroom door behind me and crawl between my comforter and sheets, naked. The house is silent, Moser’s cruiser gone from our driveway.
The worst moments of my life have always managed to creep up on me when everything is quiet. I’ll be watching TV or trying to read and then bam, my brain is all Hahaha bitch, here’s that painful memory you’d sell your soul to forget. Most involve my mother.
I know that the way the detective and Sheriff Moser looked at me is going to be one of those moments. I was an animal that needed to be tranquilized. I wasn’t me: I was the beast inside me that breaks free when I’m cornered. The thing that makes me freak out.
Black out.
I was twelve the first time I threw something at my mother with the intent to hit her. I don’t even know if I succeeded; the second the glass left my hand, her boyfriend had me pinned down on the floor.
One of his arms was as big as my entire body. It hardly seemed fair, how easily he kept me down, like I was a rag doll. The more I fought to get away, the worse he pushed.
I remember the feel of the scratchy carpet on my chin. How I’d howled like a wild animal.
“You need to calm down,” he’d said, in his deep baritone. “Y’all can’t fight like this anymore.”
The following week, he moved out.
My phone buzzes from the pocket of my jacket, where I left it before getting into the shower. Texts have filled up the screen—some from numbers I don’t recognize.
Unknown: hey it’s sully true they found bay’s body??
Andrew: what is going on?? There’s a cop car outside.
Jade: fucking call me back.
I grip my phone. Feel myself coil up. Leave me alone, get off me—
When it vibrates again, I hurl it at the wall.
“Shit.” I leap out of bed, run over to where the phone has clattered to the floor. Thunderous footsteps down the hall.
“Kacey?” My father. “What was that banging? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I fell.” I run a finger along the spidery crack at the corner of my phone’s screen. It’ll be hard to hide that, but thankfully, the phone still works.
My doorknob jangles. “Why is the door locked?”
I sit back on my heels, fully aware of my own nakedness, and there’s a hole in the drywall where my phone hit it. I’m going to have to find something to cover that up.
“I’m fine. Please leave me alone.”
More jangling. I curl onto my side, paralyzed by shame at what I’ve done to the wall and the screen of my phone. Damaging something just because I was angry—it’s not who I am.
It’s exactly who I can’t be, now that everyone seems to be watching me.
I am still under my covers, wrapped in the towel from the shower, when I hear Ashley’s SUV rumble into the driveway. The pillow is wet beneath me from my soaked hair. I can’t bring myself to get dressed, or to do anything else, really.
A knock at the door. Ashley jangles the knob; the clicking sound of a key inserting into the lock. She has a master key for all of our bedrooms, in case of major tantrums. Or in my case, a complete meltdown.
Ashley silently comes to my side holding a mug of tea. Unfolds her other hand and reveals a half moon of a white pill. “It’ll help you sleep,” she says.
I swallow it with a sip of the chamomile tea she hands me.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, stroking a lock of hair from my forehead.
I shake my head. I just want the nothingness that the pill will bring me. By the time I’m falling into a cloudy sleep, I finally remember that the vigil is tonight.
—
When I wake up, it’s almost seven and I realize that no one woke me up to get dressed. At some point, they must have decided to leave me at home, to go to the vigil without me. They haven’t left yet—I hear Lauren’s footsteps overhead, thunderous when Ashley calls for her to put her coat on.
I can’t go. Jade will never forgive me, but the thought barely registers as a blip on my conscience. I can’t look all of those people in the eyes—people with their candles and purple ribbons pinned to their coats and their prayers of hope.
Because I think I get it now: what that psychic in Pleasant Plains meant when she said that deep down, I know what happened to Bailey.
She’s dead. What other answer is there?
That deputy said they found bloody clothes. I saw the blood in the barn for myself.
When I shut my eyes, I’m there all over again. The image triggers dread in my gut, but I try to think about the blood logically.
There was a smear of it on the wall, but nowhere else in the barn, except for a few droplets on the hay. I’ve lost more blood from a bloody nose than what was on the wall. Which means—I swallow the thought like a pill—that no one was killed in the barn.
Pictures of Bailey emerge in my mind. Bailey, bloodied and injured, running in the woods from her attacker. Bailey, hiding out in the barn. Leaning against the wall for support, and leaving that blood smear herself.
