“Answers,” he repeats, sweeping his eyes over my face as if hunting for clues to an unsolved riddle.
“Yes…” I flinch at another clap of thunder. “Does this mean that you…believe me?”
Instead of answering, he hands me the doll. “Don’t bring that Aron guy here again.”
“Aron?” My eyebrows knit when he walks past me, his bicep brushing against my shoulder. “That’s all you have to say?Don’t let Aron come around again?”
He turns in the doorway, and I almost flinch when I see the hard look in his eyes. “Don’t let me see him here again.”
Why am I such a nosy person who can’t leave things alone? One of these days, my own curiosity will get me into a lot of trouble.
While the afternoon sun beats down on me like we didn’t have a storm mere hours earlier, and the tall, dry grass tickles my bare ankles, I walk the perimeter of the barbed-wire fence. Beyond it, nestled amongst tall fir trees, is a weathered ranch house with peeling white paint and a wide deck. A rusty tractor sits in the shade beside an old silver Volvo.
I glance back at the house as a bead of sweat trails down my temple. The heat in this godforsaken town shows no sign of easing up.
“Your brother looked angry,” Gwen’s disembodied voice sounds in my ear, and I stiffen.
I forgot she was on the phone.
“He’s not my brother.” I crouch down, white knuckling the phone when the door swings open.
“Why are you whispering?”
“I’m not,” I whisper.
Dressed in mucky denim overalls over a plain T-shirt, Wilfred walks to his car with a shotgun in his hand.
“You’re so whispering! Don’t deny it. Wait… Don’t tell me you’re on some secret spy mission and failed to invite me?”
Wilfred opens the driver’s door, tosses the shotgun onto the passenger seat, and gets behind the wheel.
A cloud of exhaust fumes fills the air, and I duck down as he reverses out before spinning the car around and driving down the dirt road, stopping to open the fenced gate.
“Is it normal to carry a shotgun around here?” I ask, waiting for the sputtering car to disappear from sight.
“What kind of a question is that? Wait a minute… Where are you?”
I rise back up, then continue skirting the property’s perimeter until I come to a gap in the fence that’s large enough for me to sneak through.
“Camryn,” Gwen says with a hint of a warning in her tone. “Where are you?”
“Wilfred Miller’s farm,” I admit as my top catches in the fence.
“Wilfred’s farm… Are you crazy?”
“He’s harmless, remember?” I investigate the torn fabric just below my breasts, wiggling a finger inside the hole.
“Those were Aron’s words. Not mine. Wilfred Miller is creepy as hell if you ask me.”
“Well, he’s gone anyway. Drove off in the car.”
“So…I should expect the worst if I don’t hear from you again?”
I dash across the overgrown yard, past a chicken coop, then slow to a halt as I approach the run-down porch. A buzzing bee collects nectar from a bright yellow sunflower swaying in front of a stack of tires, but that’s the only spot of color in this eerie place.
Outside the door sits a tied-up trash bag, with flies buzzing all around. The windows are covered in heavy curtains, blocking out the daylight.
“Camryn?” Gwen’s worried voice assaults my eardrum.
