Page 31 of They Say a Girl Died Here

London London London it’s always London that doesn’t change.

Her stomach was like water. She knew Grandma wasn’t well, but this wasn’t confusion. Or if it was, not like anything Anna had seen before. She looked to the next page, which again started with a badly written psalm, this time with no line breaks before it morphed into more frantic thoughts.

If this is so then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment the day of judgment the night of judgment the day of judgment rescue me from these trials it’s too much I can’t do it forever I put an arrow in will the arrow stay will she see the arrow arrow will I draw the arrow anna arrow anna Psalm 32:7 you are my hiding place you will protect me from trouble I am your hiding place I will protect you from trouble but they’re so loud in my head now always so loud they say a girl died here they say a girl died here they say a girl died here they say they say

A GIRL DIED HERE A GIRL DIED HERE A GIRL DIED HERE A GIRL DIED HERE

All these dreams in my head all these dreams the same but different

Ghosts in my head

Ghosts in my head

In my head

The last line slanted so far down it was as if Grandma had fallen asleep writing it. Anna turned over, but the next page was blank and she closed the book, all thoughts of Lucas upstairs forgotten, and stared at the frail woman sound asleep in the bed. What’s going on with you, Grandma? she thought. Who says a girl died here? Who’s got inside your head?

Ghosts in my head. Anna shivered. She felt surrounded by death, especially in this house at night where the shadows threatened to come alive at the edges of her vision, specters just out of sight. First the girls, dead girls who’d partied in this house. And now Jamie. His skin the pale blue of the moonlight. A half-typed message. I ws right, An. She pulled the blanket up under her chin and stared out at the night. If Jamie was right, then there was still a killer out there somewhere. How could she sleep? How could she sleep ever again?

36

Ghosts linger most where the living are scarce, their corporeal, petty existences shucked off once the worms start to eat. They drift to the wide-open spaces where the feet of mice in the sand can be heard pattering; they drift away from the noise of the cities. Come from the earth, go back to the earth. Maybe only then can any living thing truly appreciate this land it is part of. Once they become dust within it.

Sometimes, though, like the hungry rodents and the skittering lizards and fireflies that are lured by the headlights and streetlamps of the small towns dotted in the sprawling farmlands, they come, curious, maybe drawn by the echoes and strands of what once was, the final essence of humanity before the last molecules vanish back into the great energy.

They come on the hint of a breeze, a prickle on the back of a neck, a twitch in a sleeping child. They have moved past memory, and maybe they watch because something compels them, something that has stopped the last of them dissipating, some echo of love or hate or unfulfilled ambition, or a life ended too quickly, death too much of a terrible surprise to let go of everything that they briefly were, to go back to everything that ever was and ever shall be. The dream still holds them.

If Pastor Keene feels their presence, pressing into the gaps around the heavy wooden door or at the glass windows around him, or in the shiver of the flames from the slim candles he lights in the quiet of the church, he does not show it. He’s used to being alone in the depths of the night. He likes the solitude. He likes time to think. There are blessings and curses that come with being the pastor in a small town. He feels a weight of responsibility to do what he can to help it thrive. Even for the godless. Perhaps especially for the godless.

It has been two hours since the last truck revved its engine and Pastor Keene knows that Sheriff Adams will have ignored the drunk drivers leaving The Shamrock because, like all sheriffs in hick towns, he knows when to pick his battles. Pastor Keene is not sure how much Sheriff Adams shares his own sense of responsibility for the health of the town. As he lights a second candle, he thinks of the way the sheriff looks at him sometimes, as if he’s not quite sure of who exists beneath the pastor’s skin.

He whispers prayers as he reflects on how beautiful the candle flames are and he wonders if they shine more brightly because they burn so fast, their light fleeting. They make him think of the dead girls who haunt the town he’s trying so hard to revive. After a moment, lost in the beauty of the glow, he sparks a match to light a third.

Around him, the ghosts crowd in.

In the old Beech house, Lucas can’t sleep. He’s cold, despite the warmth of the woman next to him and the suffocating heat of the summer. He’s simmering with rage thinking about how that little bitch threatened him. Ruination by rumor. He knows how that can go. He saw it when he worked at the high school. A teacher accused. Although it came to nothing—it was nothing—the man moved away. The whispering never stopped. Lucas has nowhere else to go. He doesn’t like the cities when he works there. Too loud. Too busy. He’s a Harper’s Creek man. He’s of this land. He breathes heavy in the quiet. Someone needs to teach that girl a lesson. Is it fear or anger talking, he’s not sure. He thinks about his time at the school. Women. Girls. So hard to understand. They flirt and dance and laugh and tease. It’s so easy for them.

He thinks about Lila and Bonnie and how they were both beautiful and so different but they both knew that power. The flick of a miniskirt with a glance over the shoulder. Always looking for a response. As if all men were panting dogs one breath away from out of control. He remembers the TikTok and Insta videos he’d watched of them dancing and partying in this house over and over, when they were alive. He imagines men across town sweated over some of those posts just as he did. Youth and beauty could be addictive.

He can’t go back to sleep. He can’t wait to leave in the morning, to escape this danger, but he needs to play nice with Claire for now. He wonders if the pastor is awake. They haven’t talked in a long time. He wonders if he should break that drought, but he knows he won’t.

Instead, he lies there, looking out at the moonlight through the gap in the curtains, and tries to ignore the ghosts that crowd in.

Across town, Sheriff Adams sips whiskey he shouldn’t be drinking while on duty, but what the hell, it’s been a day. He’s deep in thought. He’s thinking about the dead boy at the motel, already haunting him, the waste of a young life. Maybe he could have done more. He thinks about the girl, Anna. Her suggestion that someone killed him. It worms into his brain, making him uneasy. It could be true.

His soul weighs heavy with it all and he thinks about going to talk to the pastor but figures, like any decent man, the pastor will be in bed by now. He thinks about Lila and then about Bonnie and then he drinks some more as all the ghosts crowd in.

37

By the time Anna dragged herself downstairs to get Tylenol, she was almost fully awake, the bright sunshine outside shards of glass stabbing her eyes. Screw this headache. She drained a glass of water with the pills and leaned against the counter, willing them to work fast.

She’d stayed in Grandma’s room for a while after putting the notebook back, before finally going up to her bedroom where she stayed fully dressed under the sheet and browsed the yearbooks again. Baby-faced Melissa in her softball cap proudly looking at Lila in their team photo. Todd, his blond-brown hair and rose cheeks making him totally recognizable even as a teenager in braces in his class photo, one row behind Bonnie. Windows into their pasts. People they were before. Changelings.

She saw Lucas in the background of some pictures. Younger. Not weathered as he was now. Neater hair. If Melissa hadn’t told her he’d worked at the school, she’d never have realized it was him. She was drawn to the photos of Jamie too. Another person she’d never have recognized. A different boy. A different time. If anything happens to me … you’ll know. She’d finally drifted to sleep with one yearbook still open, Jamie’s and Lila’s faces beaming out from the football field as dawn cracked the sky. Maybe that’s why when she dreamed, it was of him.

It had been so vivid, and it wasn’t fading. In the dream, she’d been walking with Jamie up to the house, eating doughnuts from a paper sack. He was Jamie as she’d known him, the same track marks, same thin body. A little twitchy. They were laughing. Sugar’s my new high, he’d said as he bit in. She could still feel the sugar on her lips, it tasted so good, and when the jelly squirted down her T-shirt, it made them both laugh. They came up the steps to the house, side by side, and Grandma was in her seat there, a light breeze blowing strands of hair free of her bun to tickle her face. Hi, Evelyn, I’m Jamie, Jamie said. Grandma had smiled at him, but her eyes were curious, uncertain. I think I know you, she said. The sad boy. I thought you were dead.

Anna had woken up, her head pounding and mouth dry, with a feeling that wasn’t the only strange dream she’d had in the night. Other fragments and images flashed in her mind that she couldn’t quite hold on to. Laughing with Melissa. Dry storms. Being out front with Grandma. But her headache had consumed those and all she was left with was the more vivid dream of Jamie. At least she hadn’t dreamed of the thing or the recording of the thing and all the shame of it.