Page 19 of They Say a Girl Died Here

“Sure.” Melissa dictated her digits and Anna stored them. “Although cell service is shit around here.” Melissa packed up her flashlight and the beer bottles and then they both scaled the fence and dropped down in the dark by the road.

Anna looked into the night. “You sure you’re okay to get home?”

“It’s fine.” Melissa grinned, her teeth white in the gloom. “And anyway, there’s still a week or so till death day. Lila died on the fifteenth, and Bonnie on the sixteenth. I guess if there’s a third murder, it’ll be Friday the seventeenth. Not quite the same horror movie ring to it.”

“Comforting. But message me when you’re home.”

Melissa nodded. “Good to meet you, City Anna.”

“You too, Country Melissa.” They went their separate ways into the night.

20

Anna almost didn’t see her. She was too busy picking her way through the night, mentally replaying the clip of Lila and Jamie partying in her house, trying not to think about the video that had been her face in the bright light, and the men, and the thing she couldn’t remember but every stranger could watch, to notice the slight ripples in the darkness. She was turning up the dirt track that served as some kind of drive to the house when a flash of white cloth caught her eye, something drowning in the ocean. The skin on the back of her neck prickled. There was someone else out here. She looked up at the house and her heart leaped to her mouth. Even in the poor light she could see that the front door was wide open. Oh shit.

“Grandma?” The word was muted by the thick night now settled around her. She jogged forward a few paces. “Grandma?” she repeated, slightly louder. It was hard to make out anything at all, even with her phone’s flashlight on, and she was nearly on top of her before she finally saw her.

The old woman was kneeling on the ground, her face distorted with emotion, rocking backward and forward, keening softly. Anna hurried over and crouched next to her, taking her hands. “I’m here, Grandma. Evelyn. I’m here. It’s Anna. I’m sorry. I’m here now.” Still Grandma keened, a low, terrible sound, and as Anna pulled her close so they were face-to-face, the night filled the deep wrinkles in Grandma’s skin and her face looked like a cracked mosaic. “It’s me, Grandma, I’m here,” Anna repeated, sick with guilt. What had she done? She shouldn’t have gone out. How was she going to explain this?

At last some recognition flickered. “Anna,” Grandma said. It was a statement, not a question, and she looked away again toward the patch of dry ground and keened some more. “I can’t keep doing it, Lord, I can’t keep doing it.”

“Let’s get inside,” Anna said, mentally berating herself. She shouldn’t have gone out. She should have waited until a night when Mom was home. It had been selfish. Thoughtless. “Your hands are cold.”

“Stop it!” Grandma was suddenly looking right at Anna, her eyes wide and bloodshot, and spittle flecked on Anna’s cheek as she barked out the words. “It’s so loud! The girls in my head are so loud.”

She gasped and then froze momentarily before her voice dropped. “They say a girl died here.”

A shiver ran down Anna’s spine. Between sitting in a graveyard, talking about ghosts and the dead, and then finding out that Lila and probably Bonnie had been in her house, she was creeped out enough without this.

“They say a girl died here,” Grandma said again, staring at Anna, eyes wide and afraid.

“Who says, Grandma?” Anna leaned forward, one arm reaching out for the old woman. “Who’s talking in your head?”

Grandma finally flinched and crumpled, holding her hands to her ears. “Anna,” she moaned. “Anna, Anna, Anna.” Her shoulders hunched and she started to sob, the awful sound coming deep from within her hollow chest. “Anna,” she whispered.

Anna did the only thing she could think of. She pulled Grandma into a hug and soothed her.

21

On the way into the house, Grandma had slipped into some kind of fugue state, staring glassily into the distance as Anna sat her on the side of the bed and carefully washed her feet. Thankfully there were no cuts, but her skin was just pale tracing paper and blue veins stretched over bones, transparently white in places and yet dotted with brown, as if rot was quietly starting to set in already, and the soles were dry and cold with a chill that came from the inside.

Only when Anna was carefully easing Grandma back against the pillows did a tension grip her body before she let out a gasp and finally relaxed. Light came back on in Grandma’s eyes.

“Grandma?” Anna asked tentatively.

“Anna?” Soft. Afraid. Confused. No edge of disapproval. Grandma, but not Grandma. “What are you doing here?” Her pale lips trembled and her eyes filled with an awful, terrified realization. “What was I doing?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.” Anna pulled the covers up to her waist, but Grandma wouldn’t settle.

“Why do my feet sting?”

“Just relax. I’ll get you a warm drink.” Jesus, why did Mom have to be on the night shift? “That’ll make you feel better.”

“It happened again,” Grandma said, and began to cry. It was quiet and heartbreaking and made Anna want to block her ears so she didn’t have to hear it.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said instead. “You’re fine.”

“I’m not, though, am I?” Grandma paused and caught her breath, stemming the flow of tears, her usual steel remerging. Anna felt a surprising bud of pride burst into life inside her.