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The limbs around and on top of the grave had hidden it for maybe a season. After that, the leaves rotted off and left only interwoven branches, like two hands crossed over a dormant heart. I pulled them away and grabbed my rake to scrape the site clean of any other debris. The ache in my shoulder grew with each movement, but the burning need to know only glowed brighter.
I pulled my small hand spade from my pack and knelt at the edge of the grave. The cold earth seeped through my jeans to my knees as I shoved the wide edge of the shovel into the damp dirt. It sank in easily. My heart thumped with heavy beats, as if filled with tar instead of blood. Putting pressure on the handle, I turned a small bit of earth up and out of the depression. I dug the way I’d been taught, the way I knew would preserve whatever I found. Slowly, methodically. Another slice into the earth, another push deeper into the mystery. Five turns of the spade later, each one creeping inward, I hit something springy. Something unnatural.
Wiping the sweat off my brow, I shucked my heavy coat and tossed it onto the ATV. I stepped into the grave, careful to plant my feet where I’d already dug, then took a small hand shovel to the spot. I dug around the anomaly, trying to be careful despite my desire to hurry, to finally discover what I’d been searching for. I excavated around the shape until I hit something hard. Scraping the dirt off the top, a sob rocketed from my lungs and tears overwhelmed what little resistance I had put up.
A shoe. I’d found a shoe. Blue canvas with a white sole. The only type of shoe I’d ever seen my father wear. I’d found him.
“Daddy.” I choked on my grief. Bottled for too long, it had fermented into something uglier, something bitter, and I hated whoever had done this.
Bile rose in my throat, and I darted out of the grave as my breakfast pushed its way into my mouth and out onto the unforgiving ground. Acid burned my throat, my mouth, and I didn’t stop retching until I was completely empty.
I stood and leaned my head on the nearest tree as I tried to calm the shake in my hands. Who did it? I breathed deeply, forcing myself to go about this more rationally. I needed to find clues, something to point me to his killer. The grave was the only place I could look for them, but the thought of digging him the rest of the way out horrified me, sent my skin crawling. I dry-heaved and clenched my eyes closed as endless tears streamed down my cheeks.
A scuffing sound at my back caught my attention. I turned and reached for the gun tucked in my jeans, but someone grabbed a handful of my hair, yanked me back and then shoved me face-first into the tree.
I crumpled, blood streaming down my face.
“I told you to stay out of these woods.” The scratchy voice, the unkempt beard. Recognition flared right along with a burst of fear. Danny loomed over me, my pistol in his hand. He flipped it so he had it by the barrel. The butt of my own gun was the last thing I saw.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“HEY!”
My right cheek stung, and my ears rang.
“Hey, wake the fuck up!” Someone yelled and slapped me, the sound like a shot.
I opened my eyes and tried to back away, but I couldn’t move. My wrists and ankles were bound.
Danny reared back to slap me again.
“Stop!” I struggled away, but bumped into something sturdy and fell to my side. I blinked hard, but only one of my eyes opened. The dim interior of the shack greeted me as Danny yanked me upright and shoved me against the wall.
“Stay put.”
I sucked in air to scream.
He clapped a filthy hand over my mouth and leaned down into my face. “Scream and I’ll put a bullet in your head.”
I breathed out hard through my nose.
“Nobody would hear you anyway.” He sat back on his haunches, the dim light seeping through the doorway only illuminating half his face. The matted beard seemed even filthier, the spit streaks forming two dark lines from each side of his mouth. He scratched at his sallow skin with one hand and pointed my gun at me with the other.
“Let me go.” I glanced toward the door.
“Nowhere. That’s where you’re going.” He scratched harder. “I told you to stop digging. Told you to leave well enough alone.” His voice grew to a shout. “I told you to go back!”
I cringed against the wall as his face contorted into a mask of rage.
“Please, just let me go.” I coughed. The pain in my head blossomed like the cruelest flower, and I tasted blood. “Please.”
“I can’t! You done found your daddy.” He yanked on his beard. “That’ll get back to me. I can’t have that. No I can’t.” He shook his head. “Sure can’t. No, no, can’t. No.”
“I won’t tell anyone.” I leaned forward, trying to look into his eyes, trying to convince him my life was worth more than a bullet and another shallow grave. “Please.”
“Stop saying please!” He stood, but kept the gun trained on me. “I can’t change it. Not now. Too late.” He sagged against the opposite wall. “Why didn’t you listen? Why?”
“I had to find him.” Dizziness took hold, and I dry-heaved. The effort felt like a spikey sledgehammer to my face.
“You found him. So what?” He bent over and stared into my one good eye. “You think he wanted you to die out here, too?”
“Why did you kill him?”
“Does it matter?” He shrugged.
“Yes!” I screamed with what little force I had left. “Tell me why.”
“You want a story before bedtime, is that it? You want to know it all before I kill you and bury you in the same grave?” He mumbled under his breath too quickly for me to follow. “You know what curiosity gets you?” He cackled, his missing teeth like the holes in his sanity. “Come on. I’ll show you.” He pushed off the wall, and I tried to make a move toward the door. All I managed to do was make it easier for him to rip me off the ground and drag me out of the shack.
He took hold of my hair and yanked me toward my father’s grave. “I’ll show you. I’ll show you all you need to know about curiosity.”
Agony and disbelief punctured every soft tissue of my body as my knees hit the forest floor and he dragged me along by my hair. My screams didn’t stop, but he wasn’t concerned with the noise anymore. He sped up, rushing through the woods. I skittered along the ground, kicking and twisting as the pressure on my hair increased until I feared it would rip out. He threw me into the grave, then grabbed my wrists. After a few moments, he grunted, and the pressure on my wrists eased; he’d untied me. He scrambled out of the grave, my gun still in his hand. He grabbed the small spade and threw it to me.
“Dig!”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Fucking dig or I’ll put a bullet in your forehead right this second.” He shook the pistol at me. “No loss now that I’ve fucked up your pretty face.”
He stepped closer and stabbed his tatty shoe into the dirt. “His head was about here if I remember correctly. That’s where I want you to dig.”
Tears coursed down my cheeks as I took the spade with trembling hands. I thought of throwing it at him, but I knew I was kidding myself. One shot and it was over. I was going to die here.
“Dig!” His scream was animalistic as he began muttering to himself again.
I pushed the spade into the earth and hit something only a few inches down. A tink of the shovel blade and all forward progress halted. I knew the sound, the feel. It was a skull. My father’s skull.
“Please, don’t make me.” I stared up at him as horror ripped through my mind. “Please.”
“You need to learn.” What might have been remorse passed across his face. “This is what happens when you keep pushing and pushing and pushing. Now dig. Learn your last lesson. Dig.”
“No.”
He fired a shot into the dirt. “Dig!”
My body turned to ice, my heart to forgotten stone. I had no way out. Digging was the only thing that would prolong my life, give me some semblance of a chance. I gripped the shovel with freezing fingers and moved a few inches t
o the left of where I’d just planted the spade. The shovel blade sank into the dank earth, nothing halting its progress. I twisted it slightly, then leaned on the handle.
A skull pressed up through the earth, pushing through the secrets and the lies until the dappled sunlight hit the dingy bone. I sobbed as bits of flesh stayed behind and strands of hair just a few shades darker than mine snaked through the dirt. I sat back and threw the spade away.
“See, girl? See?” He walked over to me. “Your daddy, he asked too many questions, too. Wanted to know things. Him and Lillian.” His voice cracked. “My Lillian.”
“You killed her.” A tremor went through me as he wrapped one arm around my shoulders. “Both of them.”
“I’d never hurt my Lillian. No. No. That wasn’t me. That was him. Not me. No.”
“My dad?” I closed my eyes, refusing to look at my father’s skull any longer. The cheeks I’d kissed, the face I’d loved before I even knew what love was.
“No, fool woman! The one who runs things around here. The one who told me to do this.” He pointed the gun toward my father’s skull.
“The mayor?”
He cackled, the sound sick and wrong in the cold, quiet woods. “Try a little closer to home. Cozied right up, didn’t you? Did you know he likes to chase ‘em through the woods? Hunt them?” He ended his laughter on a wheezing note.
Did he mean Garrett? No. “Garrett had nothing to do with his sister’s death. You’re lying.”
“You think I’m just some mad dog killer, don’t you?” He tapped the barrel against my forehead. “That I just killed your daddy for kicks.”
I winced, but he kept me still, his arm tightening around my shoulders.
“I’m not a mad dog. No, no, no. I’m a kept dog. I get table scraps if I behave. But you, you were like a little bunny out here, running through the woods, whee! And I chased you, but instead of snapping you up in my jaws”—He shrieked and clapped his remaining teeth together—“I warned you.” His voice lowered to a hurried whisper. “I tried to tell you. Just like your daddy, you didn’t stop asking questions. Just like Lillian, you have to die. Just like both of them, your blood will be on my hands.”
“You said you didn’t kill her. Lillian. You said—”
