Page 11 of They Say a Girl Died Here

“With my daddy,” Grandma added. “Your grandfather worked in the offices in accounts. Harper’s Creek Meats. I’d take his lunch in there some days when he forgot. I hated the smell of it. Still can’t stand that fresh-meat smell. A lot of slaughter.”

“It was a lot of slaughter that kept this town alive for a lot of years.” Johnny nodded. “The plant’s closed down now, and like I said, we weren’t farming people, but you live out here long enough and the land gets into your blood and your blood gets into the land. City folks don’t understand it. That respect. Anyway, as soon as I finished medical school, I came back. I’ve been the doctor here ever since. Over fifty years.”

“Wow.” Caroline’s eyes widened, fifty years being too great a number for her to truly comprehend. “You must know everybody.”

“I sure do. A lot of the farmers were born at home and my face was the first they ever saw. Quite a thing, huh? And Sheriff Adams? When he was six years old, he fell out of a tree stealing apples from old Mrs. Cartwright. He landed so badly he shattered his leg. The doctors at the hospital said it might be better to take it off at the knee as he’d never be able to walk on it again. We said no thank you to that, and it was a long journey back, but he had the mettle for it. I worked with him every day for nearly a year, and now you’d never know. Walks like any other fella. I delivered the youngest of his kids too, when his wife misjudged her contractions. And his deputy, Todd? Nearly died of whooping cough. Has terrible asthma. But look at him now. Grown into a fine young man.”

“You make it all sound so perfect,” Anna said. “No place is like that. Bad things happen everywhere.”

“For sure, they do. When Gene Ardale murdered his wife and kid and killed himself, that shook the town. He had MS, and it had gotten real bad and his medication wasn’t good for the mind. I knew he was down, but I hadn’t realized he was in such a bad way. I should have. I’ll see that sight when I go to sleep for the rest of my days.”

“Come on, this isn’t dinner conversation,” Mom cut in. “I prefer to hear about the good times.”

“And then Lila and Bonnie.” Anna talked over her mother, who kicked her under the table, but she ignored it, keeping her eyes on the doctor. “I saw some junkie putting up one of those posters on the church today. He thinks the killer’s still out there.”

“Ah, so it is Jamie Carlson. The sheriff thought it might be him doing it. Poor kid.” He saw Anna’s confused expression. “Jamie was Lila’s boyfriend. Local rich kid. Believe it not, star football player then. Before the drugs got him. He lives out in the Cornerstone Motel now. It’s closed down, but his parents own it. He was the last person to see Lila alive, and he was the first suspect. Turned out he had a shoulder injury, so there was no way he could have carried her or strangled her. He never got over her death, though, as you can tell. He’s a good kid underneath it all. A real shame what’s happened to him. Death has ripples and waves. Poor Jamie drowned in one.”

“It’s not a man, it’s a monster, and Anna said Farmhand three times in the mirror and he’s going to come for her next and now I can’t sleep properly.” Caroline’s exclamation was so sudden and fast, a burst of rushed fear, that they all stopped eating and stared at her.

“For god’s sake, Anna,” Mom muttered. “Why would you do that? You know what she’s like.”

“I was proving a point that it was just a bullshit story and nothing to be scared of.”

“Language.” Grandma sat up straighter, embarrassed. “Not in company. I’m sorry, Johnny, she does know better.”

Anna gritted her teeth in anger. Everyone was always apologizing for her. She was a grown woman and could curse if she wanted.

“Nothing to apologize for.” Dr. Burdett leaned forward and smiled kindly at Caroline. “And your sister is right. There is nothing to be scared of. Ghosts are…” He lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “Bullcrap.”

“Johnny!”

Anna smiled then, she couldn’t help it, and Dr. Burdett smiled back.

“You’re the spitting image of Evelyn when she was your age, do you know that? The absolute spit.”

Anna wasn’t sure who was more surprised, Grandma or herself. Grandma must have hated hearing it. The prodigal granddaughter, so loose, so free, and look where that got her. Grandma on the other hand was wound so tight she was in danger of snapping. Always had been. Never seen in jeans, hair always curled. Looked the same for twenty years. Old before her time. She and Grandma had nothing in common except they both had black holes in their heads where some memories should be.

“Maybe,” Mom said, looking from one to the other. “I guess I’ve never seen it before.”

Uncomfortable under everyone’s gaze, Anna gathered up the plates and took them through to the kitchen, washing them under the dripping faucet before looking out the window as the sun sank, drenching the horizon in red, the fading light bleeding across the fields, making her feel a pang of something she couldn’t explain. As if the land was calling to her with its strange kind of awful beauty.

She watched until the reds turned deep into crimson and then black, and once she was sure the others had forgotten her, she crept up to her room. It was only eight thirty, but she’d had enough of people for one day. She just wanted to lie in the quiet and sleep.

14

Anna woke a little after eleven, her head pounding and jaw tight, confused that it wasn’t morning already. She grasped at the wisps of memory that hovered momentarily in her consciousness, and then frustratingly they were gone, leaving her with nothing. She wondered if she’d started to remember the thing in her sleep. She must have, because a few times when she’d woken up since being in this house, she felt it. Something just out of reach. Something awful. All she wanted to know was those men’s names. She wanted those four names so badly. One day she’d have them back. She had to.

She stretched and got to her feet, now wide-awake. The lasagna Doc Burdett had brought had been too cheesy and her mouth was dry, not helped by the constant heat that settled in the house at night as if creeping in for shelter from the cooling dark. She’d grab a Diet Coke and watch a movie and wait for dawn. Early evening and dawn were the times when she could sleep most easily. The hours in between she struggled. At least she knew where Mom had put the sleeping pills for Grandma if it came to it. Silver linings and all that.

In the corridor a sliver of light shone from under Mom’s door at the far end. It made her feel better that Mom might be awake too. At night she felt the oppressive nature of the house more, as if the walls were breathing, pulsing and alive, waiting to consume her. Downstairs was a pit of darkness, and she descended into it barefoot and silent, as if she were a ghost. She went to the kitchen first, the dripping faucet greeting her, and opened the fridge, staring into the white glow as it hummed, enjoying the cold air on her skin, moving the leftover lasagna dish, enough for the next day’s dinner, aside to reach the Diet Coke.

“Shut up.”

At first, as she whirled around, Anna thought the shape right behind her was a monster, a ghoul, the Farmhand, even, but as her eyes readjusted to the gloom, she saw more clearly. Wild eyes. Gray hair. Pale skin. Grandma was standing in the glow of the fridge light, inches from her.

“Shit, Grandma.” Anna’s fading headache picked up its throbbing again. Grandma didn’t move, her body rigid with such tension she looked as if she might scream or implode. She frowned, her gaze fixated on the inside of the fridge. “That’s not right,” Grandma whispered, and then Anna closed the door, condemning them both back to the murk.

“Shut up,” Grandma hissed again. She hadn’t quite removed all her carefully applied Sunday makeup, and dark patches smeared under her glaring eyes, gathering in the crepe-paper wrinkles there. Her feet were bare and beneath the hem of her nightgown her pale legs snaked with varicose veins. She looked like a monster. A banshee. Something entirely not human, or perhaps something that had once been human but was now other. Anna couldn’t decide what would be more unsettling. Whichever, her heart was racing and she wished she hadn’t woken up.