The Creeping Page 18

  A white-hot flash of anger sears through me. Zoey knows it freaks me out to talk about stuff like that, especially here, of all places. Our one and only major fight—more like all-out war—was over her insisting that we use a Ouija board to—get this—contact Jeanie’s ghost on Halloween night freshman year.

  I jump out of the car and shout, “Why would you say that? We’re about to go searching through a graveyard, Zo. Why can’t you ever keep your big mouth shut?”

  She stops abruptly; her white tank top already has Dalmatian spots from the rain. In the dim light her edges blur, making her a shimmery specter under the iron heart of the cemetery gate. She calls over her shoulder, “Isn’t the devil just the ultimate monster?” A chill travels up my spine.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Sam says at my side, making me start. I nod a little and then grab his hand, lacing my fingers with his, trying to feel his skin on mine more than I feel scared.

  Zoey disappears into the cemetery, after tapping the heart, and we follow. “Talking about supernatural phenomena still freaks you out, huh?” Sam asks. I try to focus on a gray van and a beige four-door parked at the opposite end of the lot. Most likely deserted cars from the last kegger.

  “Maybe it freaks you out because of how mysterious Jeanie’s disappearance was?” Sam continues. “Or maybe it’s because of the way people talked afterward? You remember that pastor in Rascan they used to interview on the news? He’d rant about the evil hocus-pocus at work in Savage. I remember my mom hustling me out of the grocery store because some out-of-towner in produce was shouting that we were all devil worshippers and brought this on ourselves. All that stuff would freak any kid out, especially since you were so close to it all.”

  “I guess,” I answer flatly. The truth is I don’t have a clue. While other little girls giggled infectiously over ghost stories and got adrenaline-junkie highs over scream-fest slumber parties, I hated them. Super dumb, if you think about it. What’s real doesn’t eek me out, but what couldn’t possibly be makes me totally crazy. I know better than anyone that people do beastly things; my mom deserted us, remember. That I can stomach. But just whisper Grim Reaper to me before bed, and I won’t sleep a wink.

  It hits me that I didn’t tap the iron heart once we’re a few yards deep in the cemetery. Whatever. It was just one of Zoey’s scary stories meant to screw with me. I tighten my grip on Sam’s hand. Strange how perfectly our hands fit together.

  “Do you believe in the devil?” I ask quietly. I know, it can’t be good karma or cosmic juju or whatever to ask about the devil in a graveyard. But at the risk of cursing myself for life, there’s something about what Zoey said that coaxes that strange, nagging feeling from my gut.

  Sam strokes my hand with his thumb. “Not in a religious sense. Actually”—he feigns a horrified expression—“I agree with Zoey. The devil is just a scary monster that people dream up. And who says there’s only one?”

  “Devils, you mean?” I shiver, scanning the haggard gravestones surrounding us.

  He gets that parenthesis mark between his brows. “Yeah, why wouldn’t there be? There’s more than one bad person in the world. Why wouldn’t there be more than one monster? Even more than one kind of monster?” I scrunch up my nose. “Sure there is.” He chuckles. “You’ve got those that aren’t bound by space and time, spirit types. And then you’ve got those that are more animal than ghost, like werewolves, yetis, and vampires. They may have longer life spans, but they can die. Let’s hope we’re dealing with the latter.” He’s smiling in jest, but there’s a wistful quality to his voice that makes me doubt he’s kidding.

  The raindrops bead on the patchwork of emerald moss and soil. Neon-green lichen hangs straggly, like Silly String from the dark boughs of trees. The cemetery is unchanged and peaceful except for the hundreds of footsteps left between graves. All sizes crisscrossing, like a parade or a funeral procession marched through.

  “The oldest graves are along the fence, facing the shore. It makes sense to start on the opposite side, since we need to check the most recent,” Sam reasons. I catch a flash of Zoey’s blond head in that direction, so light it glows white as a halo. When we reach her, she’s refastening the strap of her sandal, perched on a crumbling gravestone that reminds me of a giant molar.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to sit on those,” Sam says. Zoey makes a show of jumping down and curtsying. She falls in line next to me.

  We work our way from the left to the right. It’s morbid work sorting through the dead. Well, the very dead, since the last person buried here died in 1946. The only noises are the sigh of the wind and the rhythm of raindrops.

  “These names sound made up,” Zoey complains as she stands in the middle of a family plot surrounded by a waist-high wrought-iron fence. “Gottmo, Bbjorstrand, Faltskog—they sound like characters from those online wizard games guys play when they’re too fugly to get laid.” She bats her eyelashes innocently at Sam. “You know the type, Sam—everything they know about girls they learned from porn and music videos?”

  Sam flicks his hair from his eyes, ignores the slight, and answers, “Many of the families that industrialized Minnesota were of Scandinavian decent.”

  Zoey blinks at him. “Come again?”

  “Like, descendants of the Vikings? That’s why there are so many Scandinavian names here.” His eyebrows arch up, and he looks from me to Zoey. “You know, that’s probably why there are so many blond and redheaded families in Savage,” he muses. I chew the inside of my cheek, nodding thoughtfully. I’ve never lived anywhere else, so I haven’t considered that Savage has more redheads, but it makes sense that someone who kills them would gravitate here if it’s true.

  “There are some families in Savage that are descendants of the original settlers. Not my family, but hasn’t Mayor Berg’s been here for six or seven generations?” Sam adds. Zoey starts humming to herself to tune him out. She stops at a massive tombstone with a shield and an eagle engraved. “That’s the coat of arms for the US Navy,” he says. “There are graves of military families here, since the navy built ships before World War II just a few miles up the Minnesota River.”

  Zoey snaps to attention. “Guys in uniform?” She smacks her lips. “Yum.”

  After thirty or forty graves, it takes me longer and longer to calculate ages from years of birth and death. Many of the headstones are weathered, crumbling, turning to dust, like the bodies buried underneath. I kneel down at the base of a tall, pointed column engraved with a faded epitaph. I run my fingers along the grooves, able to make out only half the message before I trace the shape of vanishing letters with my finger. It’s easier to feel them than see them. SWEET GIRL, HERE YOUR SPIRIT SHALL REST UNTIL THE HOLY FATHER DELIVERS THEE HOME.

  “Sam. Zoey,” I call. They backtrack quickly. “Look at this one. The date and name are too faint to read, but the epitaph could be about a missing girl. ‘Until the Holy Father delivers thee home.’ They were waiting for her to be found.” I run my finger over the eroded surface. There are striations and grooves made in the stone where the dates and name should be.

  Sam crouches next to me and leans forward, examining the headstone. “It’s like they’ve been filed or scratched away. It must have happened decades ago, since even the scratches are smooth and weathered to the touch. Their edges have been rounded by rain and wind like the rest of the grave.”

  “But if she went missing and she was never found, at least not when the epitaph was written, why put a year of death?” I say.

  “For the same reason her parents made her a headstone at all. They knew she wasn’t coming back, and they wanted to memorialize and mourn her. It’s probably just the year they lost their daughter,” Sam says.

  “So why would someone remove the date and name on a headstone?” Zoey whispers. My hand feels extra empty not holding Sam’s, so I take hers.

  “They didn’t want her grave to be identified,” I say. I feel Zoey’s shudder travel up my arm.

 
; “But who did it?” she asks.

  I shake my head and admit, “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s check to see if any others have been removed.” Sam’s already starting forward. After ten minutes we discover four more graves with names and dates that have been filed away. The vandal grew sloppy as his work continued, and on two of the graves it’s possible to discern the dates of birth and death through the scratches. One of them was six and the other seven. The years of death—or disappearance—are in the 1930s.

  Zoey’s started to shiver. Her teeth chatter as she says, “Can we get out of here? I’m getting a really bad feeling.”

  There’s a distant grumble of thunder. I look up, and my face is splattered with more raindrops.

  “Sure. You ready, Stella?” Sam asks.

  I nod and then hesitate. “Wait. I want to see something.” I turn on my heels, dragging Zoey along, heading to where the little girl was found. Our shoes slip and slide in the mud. The gold straps of Zoey’s sandals are speckled with dirt. The yowling wind picks up, and the willows rock angrily back and forth. A flash of lightning illuminates the sky and a clap of thunder comes right after. I follow a stone path that twists and turns through the core of the cemetery. We snake around the corner of a large mausoleum. Fluorescent yellow police tape marks a perimeter around the mudslide.

  “It’s just upturned earth,” Sam says behind us. “They removed all the bones and fragments from the coffins so they could reconstruct what was destroyed. I heard that the anthropology and forensic science departments at U of M are going to restore the skeletons.”

  Sam’s right. It’s nothing but black and wet collapsed earth, edged by the mossy bank of the cemetery. “I guess it was silly that I wanted to see it again. I just thought that maybe it could help,” I say. Zoey drops my hand and wraps her arm around me.

  “It’s okay, doll,” she says. I let her lead me a few steps before something bright catches my eye. I pull away.

  To the right of the slide, where the wrought-iron fence washed away with the mud, is a cluster of white candles at the base of an old oak. The tree’s roots, with the look of knuckles poking up from the dirt, obscured our view of the wax pillars as we approached the slide. The flames have been extinguished by rain, but the heady char of smoke is still in the air. The candles form a perfect circle, and at their center is the corpse of a tabby cat.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tripping forward, I call back to Zoey, “Don’t look.” She’s at my side, squatting by the strange altar, a moment later. The tabby’s rust-colored fur is threadbare, and its tiny rib cage pokes through the mangy coat. The circle of candles allows for a few inches of space around the cat’s prostrate body. There are no other objects within their borders, but there is a smear of red at the base of the oak’s trunk. It’s bright and wet.

  “Blood,” Zoey breathes, staring at the same charnel graffiti. “The cat’s?”

  “Probably,” I whisper. A jagged tear rings the cat’s neck like a bloody necklace. I gently nudge the head and it rolls, unattached from the body, pupils focused on me as it tumbles. It rocks to a stop, the creature’s little pink spongy tongue sticking out.

  “Ewww!” Zoey screams, throwing herself backward, landing on her butt in the mud. She scurries to her feet and ducks behind Sam; one watering eye peeks out from behind his shoulder.

  “Stella, come on. Let’s go back to the car and call the cops.” Sam speaks steady and slow. I shake my head for a moment. How can I leave this helpless little animal alone? I scour the ground for anything I can use to cover the cat. There’s nothing but a loose wad of police tape. I edge toward the head, trying not to see the purple-and-red jelly of its wound. I fold the tape over the head, nimble fingers becoming fat and clumsy, brushing a damp ear. I choke down a whimper and whirl away.

  I tail Sam and Zoey through the cemetery. Everything is watery from tears and pounding rain. I try to rub away the sensation of the cat’s fur on my palm, but I can’t. I feel it under my skin rather than on it.

  We sprint through the gravel lot and rush inside the station wagon. I wipe the steam from the window and squint out to where the other two cars were parked. They’re gone.

  “W-who would do something like that?” Zoey stammers. Sam fumbles with the buttons on his cell, fingertips slippery and blue. I cross my arms over my face and close my eyes. I try to take refuge in the blackness, but the image of the cat’s rolling head is burned on the insides of my eyelids.

  Sam’s on the phone with the police station. “Yes. That’s what I said, a dead cat . . . No, not hit by a car . . . Excuse me, but someone butchering a pet is a serious police matter . . . . Hello? Hello?”

  With a clatter, he tosses his phone on the dashboard. “They hung up on me. With everything going on, you’d think they’d take something like this seriously.”

  My arms droop to my sides, and I stare at the worn ceiling of the car. A yellowed spot stares back. I want to call Shane. Spill everything we’ve been up to. But I can’t risk getting sent to Chicago, not when human lives are at stake. “Everything going on is probably why they’re not taking it seriously, Sam. They don’t see that everything is connected,” I murmur, drawing imaginary lines from stain to stain just like connect-the-dots. “There were cars parked over there”—I tap against the window—“and now they’re gone. We didn’t see anyone in the cemetery.” I pause. Look back up at the stains. “You don’t think they were doing that to the cat while we were in there, do you?” My stomach lurches.

  “No, I’m sure it—uh—he or she had been dead for a while.” Sam sounds hopeful, not certain. He turns the key in the ignition, and the wagon springs alive.

  “I’ve got to drop you guys off so I can get to my shift at BigBox.” He indicates the car’s digital clock.

  I know Zoey is traumatized, because she misses the opportunity to say something snide. Instead she murmurs weakly, “Bring me home. I’m going to puke.”

  The ride back is mostly quiet. Zoey gives me a quick hug and nods to Sam before running into her house through the dumping rain. I focus on the canvas of my tennis shoes as we cut through town. I’ve hit my threshold for twisted today—not just today, for a lifetime. I don’t need to see my neighbors patrolling the streets in armed posses or building bonfires to burn witches.

  “Is your dad going to be home tonight?” Sam asks as we pull into my driveway.

  “Probably not until late.” A little spike of terror runs through me. I don’t want to be alone. There’ll be too much time to think. Too much time for nightmares—real and imagined.

  “I get off at nine. If you want, I could come over.”

  “I’d like that,” I say speedily, too relieved to care about playing it cool. He smiles a little sadly as he leaves me waving from my porch. I exhale deeply and force myself to push through the front door.

  Two hours later, showered, fed, and a little less ragged, I curl on the couch with my laptop.

  “Okay, back to it,” I say to Moscow, who’s purring loudly from the opposite end of the couch. I need answers, and this is the only way I know to find them. Since all evidence points to a multigenerational cult at work in Savage, and the cat, butchered on a makeshift altar, screams twisted sacrifice, I search three terms: “cult sacrifice,” “animal sacrifice,” and “child sacrifice.” I start with general searches on Wikipedia and Google.

  After snowdrifts of bizarro articles, I’m too queasy to wade through all the dementedness anymore. I need to narrow results, since it’s unlikely that Savage residents are performing an obscure ancient Chinese ritual of sacrificing people to the river deities or that the fictional Cthulhu Mythos has been brought to life in our small town. I get the point: There are sickos out there, and they believe all sorts of warped things.

  Next I search the same terms but limit the results geographically to Minnesota. Using search engines, I come up with a load of indie bands and heavy metal groups with the terms in their names. I switch to searching news databases and
subscription websites like LexisNexis, which we use for the Herald, but I don’t find a single article about any cults, legends, or lore in Minnesota that says an iota about sacrifice or redheads.

  No shortage of death and dismemberment, though. This area’s history is grisly, not the oasis-in-the-wilderness fantasy I remember learning about in school. Fur traders settled their outposts here and massacred the wildlife. Pioneers drove the natives from their villages. Colonial wars left mass casualties. And outbreaks of tuberculosis, called “the white death,” wasted the population. I gulp. Maybe there’s something to the name of our town after all? Yet none of this has anything to do with Jeanie or the tortured cat in the cemetery.

  Moscow arches his back, showing off his chubby tummy. “You brilliant little pig,” I coo to him. I bring up the Savage Public Library’s webpage and click on the news archives. All of the town’s records aren’t available, but it’s worth a try. I search “animal sacrifices.” Zero results. I glower at the screen. I was so sure. I’m about to close my laptop and give in to my sulk and that pint of ice cream in the freezer when something occurs to me. I type “animal disappearances”; holding my breath, I hit enter.

  I blow out the breath in a whoosh of dismay. I was right. Seventy-three entries for missing pets in the Savage Bee’s classifieds fill the screen. The newspaper still devotes its last four pages to community classifieds: rummage sale notices, job postings, houses and cars for sale, and missing pets. I hunch over the laptop and scroll through them, my throat getting tighter with each. There are holes in what’s available, multiple-year blocks where no search results are yielded, but there’s enough for it to be a kick in the chest. There are entries dating from 1910 to 2014. Some entries are even from the same week. Families missing dogs and cats, local farms missing livestock, the nursery school missing a goat from their petting zoo, all posted in the classifieds in the hope that someone will find their animal and return it.