The Creeping Read online

  All the things that should stay hidden at cemeteries are unearthed by the mudslide. Coffins exposed, either swept downhill by the slide or jutting at sharp angles from the ground like compound bone fractures piercing skin. Jaundiced partial skeletons litter the soil. Relief swells in me as I hope that we’re only seeing the remnants of those who died a hundred years ago. Tara Boden is a drama whore; of course she’d seize the opportunity for attention. I squirm out of Daniel’s grasp. On unsteady legs I inch forward, toes of my sneakers narrowly missing ancient bones as I work my way into the shallow crater the slide left. Daniel doesn’t follow. I drag my arm over my top lip, wiping off water and snot from the run.

  I go from hobbling to crouching when I reach the bottom. I squint at the sludge in front of me, the votives’ pallor hardly enough to see by. Gnarled tree roots. Crumbled graves. A fractured Virgin Mary statue that rests headless on its side. The clouds drift away, and the moon’s light penetrates the gloom around me. A flash of yellow cloth sticking up from the mud. A nest of brown lichen or matted hair. A rubber-soled sneaker. Fuchsia-painted fingernails. Bits and pieces of a body visible in the weak light. She rests diagonally on the lid of a coffin at the bottom of the crater. Before the storm she might have been righted, hands folded and crossed on her chest, sleeping deeply on the top of an ancient grave with the look of a princess waiting to be awakened by a kiss. I suck in my breath, afraid to exhale.

  I must look like I’ve lost my mind as I sink down to my hands and knees. The slimy soil squishes and bubbles under me. I crawl carefully, so the earth doesn’t swallow me up. I choke back vomit as my hand brushes what I know is a human skull. Bones. Decomposed flesh. Eyeballs. Brain matter. Maggots. All the gross things that are likely in this soil seep into my hands and knees. But I have to get to that body. I have to make sure that it is a body and that I’m not seeing things. That I haven’t lost every last ounce of sanity I had.

  Out of the voices behind me I hear Zoey arguing. Demanding that the cops be called. Barking orders in a way only Zoey can get away with. A few more feet to go. I still hold my breath. I try to let it out very gently and to draw it back in without the dead noticing. I don’t want to breathe them in either.

  I can see her now. Hair, hands, torso. For a second I’m grateful the body isn’t dismembered, but that fades once I note the size of the features. Small and doll-like. A little girl. Ivory skin taut over her bones; hair is matted on her forehead. It’s impossible, but my tongue presses to the roof of my mouth to say Jeanie’s name. Of course it’s not her. I haven’t taken anatomy yet, but who doesn’t know enough about decomposing corpses from watching CSI reruns to know that someone buried eleven years ago wouldn’t be in this condition? But still. She looks young. She looks six.

  I reach for her—I don’t know why, since the last thing I want is to actually touch her. My hand splayed wide, fingers stretching against the joints. Three inches. Two. In the instant before I make contact, the sludge shifts and bubbles under me and I’m knocked forward against the coffin lid. The jolt rocks her head to the side, but the red hair and the flap of skin that is her scalp stay put. “Naked” is the word my brain vomits. Her head is hairless. Skinned. Scalped. The membrane that she should be wearing as a crown is disconnected, limp in the mud, only placed near so it might look as though she’s in one piece.

  “Zoey.” I must say her name a hundred times in the minute it takes her to crawl, drunk and in her bikini, through the demolished graves. She reaches me, hands fumble to pull me away.

  It takes twenty minutes for the police to arrive. During that time I’m a nonverbal animal completely consumed with watching and listening to those around me. Zoey torpedoes Tara Boden with insults until she leaves and returns with a blanket from her date’s car. It smells of mildew, but I let her wrap it around me anyway. As we huddle together in the dark, her arm pressed against mine, I close my eyes and wish away the scene unfolding in front of me.

  Daniel stands where I left him. His shoes have sunk into the mud like quicksand swallowing him up. I don’t think he’d mind. He’s completely still: no flinching, no twitching, no wailing. His eyes never leave the matted hair sticking up from the upturned earth, spindly as a grubby little shrub climbing toward the light, lonely away from its head.

  Michaela and Cole aren’t here. Probably taking cover from the rain in my car. It isn’t pouring from the sky like the heavens have burst open on our heads, but it sprinkles. Yes, that’s it. Jeanie went to heaven eleven years ago, and tonight they spit her back to earth. Thank God I can’t form a sentence, because Zoey would have me committed.

  I’ve come full circle since she dragged me from the mud pit of corpses. And she had to drag me, looping her arms under mine and guiding me away. The body’s tiny hand, outstretched and decorated with peeling nail polish, momentarily rotted my sense. I was certain she was connected to Jeanie. It felt too cosmic that on this day of all days a corpse would show up. How could there even be another hurt little girl? The frosting on the cake, albeit a twisted cake made from guts and demon horns, was that Daniel and I were both here to witness it. There’s no way this is not some bigger-than-all-of-us reckoning. But the farther away Zoey hauled me from the body, the bossier the voice of reason in my head got. What was I thinking? Did I have gruel for brains all of a sudden? What happened to the reasonable girl who grew up in the shadow of hysteria and learned that the color of madness wasn’t for her?

  By the time Zoey plastered a perma-smile on her face and created a cocoon out of the blanket for us, I’d talked my inner psycho off the ledge. This was a coincidence. Ridiculous happenstance. Maybe I even imagined that the body looked fresher than it was? Maybe some fluke global-warming voodoo preserved the body for the last hundred years until she was freed from her coffin during the storm? Maybe it only looked like she’d been lying on top rather than inside the tomb? Maybe her hair detached from the skull because that’s what happens when bodies decompose? All the explanations in the world won’t banish the nagging in my stomach that this can’t be, won’t be, the case. Sure there is the whole inconvenient fact that they probably didn’t have hot-pink nail polish a hundred years ago. But also, there is this writhing inside me, like I’ve been infected by a tapeworm of doom. As the police sirens sing louder, I feel the parasite nibbling away my reason to make room for fear.

  The blue-and-red lights of cop cars reflect on the surfaces around us like glittering disco balls. Zoey leaves my side, cradling my face in her hands and brushing her lips to my forehead. She mumbles a few words and then is gone. My classmates leave too, drawn toward the flashing lights or away from them, depending on how drunk they are. I crane my neck to watch the stream of police descend on the cemetery. Detective Shane shoves through the uniforms and angles to where I sit.

  “Stella!” he shouts above the commotion. I rise on jittery knees. Zoey is hot on his tail. She went in search of someone who’d be familiar to me. Of course she did. My best friend who crawled through corpses for me. The concern scrunches up Shane’s face, and offhandedly I think he looks like a shar-pei. The comparison makes me guilty. He’s a youngish older guy, and it’s probably my unsolved case—unsolved because of my screwed-up memory—that’s made him look more ancient than he is. Either that or he’s a chain smoker. “Are you hurt?” he asks. I must look like I’ve been run into the mud by a bulldozer. Then Zoey comes to stand by my side, and we look like we climbed out of the bowels of the planet.

  “No. There’s a body of a little girl. It’s Jeanie,” I blurt out before I can stop myself. Zoey shoots me a worried glance and throws her arm over my shoulders. Shane chews the inside of his cheek for a moment before turning and surveying the mudslide in front of us. Uniforms are setting up giant fluorescent lights to illuminate the ground.

  “Why don’t we get Stella back to her car, and I’ll come out to the lot as soon as I can. I don’t think she needs to see this,” he says to Zoey. His expression and tone are loaded. Zoey nods knowingly. They think I’ve los
t it. They’re probably right. I don’t resist as Zoey tows me through the pandemonium of uniforms, equipment, radio chatter, and sopping-wet teenagers. I wonder halfheartedly where Daniel disappeared to.

  “Did Sam come back?” I murmur. Zoey smiles sadly at me. She must think I’m delirious and asking for my old friend. “He was here earlier,” I squeeze out, but I don’t have the energy to explain. Once at the gravel lot, we duck under police tape. Michaela rushes away from where she was in the throes of an argument with a cop. Cole’s close at her heels with her cell out.

  “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 w
as 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.