INTO THE LIGHT OF THE DARK BLACK NIGHT
STROBING LIGHTS PAINTED the lake house with splashes of red and blue. There were four vehicles parked in the front yard, not including the Jeep: two Dodge Chargers from the Greenwood County Sheriff’s Office, a Kansas Highway Patrol Police Interceptor, and a windowless white van from the Medical Examiner’s Office in Eureka. All had their light bars flashing, but all were empty. Their owners were around back where orange extension cords had been strung to power several twin-head work lights.
Through the Jeep’s windshield, Kris could see the long shadows of the investigators stretching out into the darkness. A white glow hovered around the side of the house, illuminating a large pile of latticework that had been stripped from the back deck.
Ben Montgomery had been the only call she made and the first person on the scene. She had quickly concocted a story about dropping her cell phone between a gap in the deck planks, even though no such gap existed. She told him that she had gone down to retrieve the phone. That’s when she saw the body. She didn’t say that it was Poppy. She didn’t have to. There had been a shift in Ben’s tone when he heard that it appeared to be the corpse of a young girl. He had simply told Kris to sit tight. He was on his way.
That had been over an hour ago. In that time, Sadie had only asked once why the police were coming. Kris told her that she had found something underneath their deck that had to do with a missing girl. Sadie had nodded but said nothing. She had shown a surprising lack of interest in the events of the past few hours. She apologized for swimming in the lake without telling her mother first, and then she had said nothing more about it.
Kris remembered everything though. The longer she sat with her thoughts, the more numb her body became. She kept seeing Violet’s face, over and over, her eyes staring up as her tiny body drifted down into a lake many claimed was bottomless.
It was close to one in the morning when Ben came trudging up from the back of the house. He motioned for Kris to join him outside, away from Sadie. Kris turned to Sadie in the passenger seat. Their clothes were nearly dry, although they still held the scent of lake water. Sadie’s eyes drooped. She could barely keep them open.
“Why don’t you climb in the back seat and lie down? I’ll wake you when we’re ready to go.” She helped Sadie climb between the seats and stretch out on the second row, then she opened the glove compartment and took out the iPad. She powered it up and saw that it had just enough battery left to entertain Sadie until she fell asleep. She handed it to Sadie. The glow of the device lit her exhausted face with a soft white light as Kris started the engine, rolled up the windows, and cranked the air conditioning. She stepped out into the thick weeds.
Ben was waiting for her at the side of the front porch. His brown hair was slick with sweat. He wore blue rubber gloves, which he picked at like dead skin. The knees of his tan pants were covered in dirt. She walked over to him.
For a long moment, neither spoke. Insects droned from their hiding places in the overgrown yard. Finally, Ben nodded as if answering a question and said, “It’s her. She still had some scraps of clothing on her that matched what she was wearing when she …”
Kris wanted to tell him what she knew, that Poppy had simply sat down against the house and remained there until dehydration or the heat did her in. But even if her foggy brain had been able to put these facts into coherent thoughts, she could not be sure that Ben would believe them.
“What about Camilla?” Kris managed to ask.
Ben gave his beard a hard tug. “Haven’t called her or Jesse yet. Figured they could sleep for a bit longer.”
Kris saw that his eyes were wet with the threat of tears.
From around the back of the house came the sound of stern voices barking orders.
Kris ran a hand over the back of her neck and felt the grit of sweat and dirt beneath her hair. She opened her mouth to speak, then paused, realizing that nothing she could say would make things better.
Ben’s chest heaved suddenly, and Kris was shocked to see tears slipping down his cheeks. They disappeared into the thicket of his beard. “She looked like she was taking a nap down there. Just pulled her knees up to her chest and laid her head down and took a nap until someone came looking for her.” He swiped at the tears, his sadness overtaken by a seething anger he had carried with him long before this night. “She was there for over four years. Four years. Waiting for someone to find her.”
Kris did not mind waking Darryl Hargrove in the middle of the night. He had said to call him for “anything,” and so she did, requesting a different house, just as so many other renters of River’s End had done before her.
She met him one block north of Center Street, on Maple. The house was a single-story ranch, built in the 1960s but still in relatively good shape by Pacington standards. The owners had moved to Overland Park to be closer to their son, who was attending the University of Kansas, but the house had been on the market for over a year. There was not much threat of the place selling before Kris and Sadie left town.
Kris had asked Ben if someone could gather up their clothes and toiletries from the lake house and drop them off at the new place, and he volunteered to do the job himself. She hated to add one more thing to his plate, but she couldn’t stomach the thought of entering that house at night. She thought of the Prozac capsules she had left scattered on the bathroom floor and what scenarios might run through Ben’s mind when he saw them, but in the end, she decided she just didn’t care.
As it turned out, Ben wasn’t the one to drop off their things anyway. A deputy whose name tag read J. Williams rapped on the front door at a quarter past three in the morning. Kris felt the muscles in her neck tighten as she stared at the uniformed officer on the doorstep. The last time she had spoken to the police at such an ungodly hour, they had called to tell her that her husband was dead. She took a breath and let the moment pass, then thanked Deputy Williams as he carried in their duffel bags.
The new house had three bedrooms, but Kris and Sadie chose to sleep on the pullout couch in the living room. Kris turned on the TV as soon as they crawled into bed. She found the first mindless program she could among the 800-plus channels: a marathon of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on the Food Network. They fell asleep just as Guy Fieri was explaining the history of Vietnamese cuisine while cheeseburger banh mi dribbled down his bleached goatee. Kris took one last look at her daughter, snuggled up to the crooked-eyed frog she called Bounce, and then closed her eyes. When they woke, it was almost noon, and a sous chef from Fort Wayne, Indiana, had just found out he had been Chopped.
For the next two days, the TV stayed on nonstop. All rules went out the window as Kris let Sadie watch as many shows as she wanted. They curled up on the thin mattress, avoiding the support bar that bit through at the center, and zoned out to everything from House Hunters to Bubble Guppies. Sadie drifted in and out of sleep, sometimes using the iPad, freed from the car’s glove compartment, to play Angry Birds or Crossy Road. They ate from the two restaurants in town that delivered: Mama Mia’s Pizza and a Chinese restaurant that may as well have been called Overcooked Noodles and Dry Rice. There was something liberating in their self-imposed confinement. It was the sensation of being in control of their own destiny. There were no chores to drag them out of bed, no cleaning, no home-improvement projects—only this temporary home with its dated shag carpet and cheap furniture that had been easily assembled with a single Allen wrench. There were no fingers under their skulls or whispers in their ears to force them down a predetermined path.
Sadie was back to communicating mostly through nods and shrugs, just as she had when they first left Colorado. But this behavior no longer concerned Kris. She would give her daughter the time she needed to process her emotions. Sadie’s silence had become a comfort rather than a concern.
But as Sadie became more and more placid, Kris found her mind working to make sense of the events that had occurred. She had never truly considered herself a religious person. She had to admit that she had tried on numerous occasions to sense the presence of her dead parents, but she also knew that these had been moments of weakness, seeking an otherworldly connection to dull the loss.
Violet had been something entirely different. She was born not from a biblical prophecy but from a dark power deep within the earth. There was a fissure below Lost Lake that bled into a world no human had thought to name. Kris could not be sure if it was good or bad or indifferent. But she knew that it existed. There was no doubt in her mind. And its existence kept her up at night, staring at the popcorn ceiling while Sadie lay beside her, snuggled into a musty pillow. She thought about what was down there, shifting, searching once more for a way into the light.
Three days later, Poppy Azuara was committed to the ground. So many people crammed into the tiny chapel at Hope Church that two old stereo speakers were run out into the yard so that the overflow crowd could hear the services.
Camilla and Jesse saved two spaces in the third pew for Kris and Sadie, while they took their designated places in the front row. There were no words exchanged before the funeral began, only a moment where Camilla’s eyes met Kris’s and the two mothers nodded as if to say, This is the pact we made, the beautiful, terrible responsibility of bringing a life into the world.
The weather had thankfully decided to cooperate that day. A cool breeze blew in over the lake, twisting its way through the woods along the highway and through the church grounds. A few people fanned themselves with the programs they had been handed when they entered. On the cover was a color photo of Poppy in the field beside the Auto Barn. Cap rested his head against her shoulder. In her lap was a large white bird dog with brown and black spots. The dog was clearly too big for the little girl to hold, but she wouldn’t have had it any other way. She hugged him around his neck and peered up over his back, a huge smile on her face. She was missing both lateral incisors, and her top front teeth tucked over her bottom lip in a way that made her look like a grinning bunny.
The same photo had been blown up and displayed on an easel at the front of the chapel. Numerous potted flowers and plants left little room for movement on the chancel. Kris spotted a cluster of purple violets and her stomach turned.
Pastor Charles Murphy (simply “Pastor Charles” to the people of Pacington) stepped up to the pulpit and cleared his throat. A heavy silence fell over the room. Kris glanced around and, for the first time since entering the chapel, saw just how many faces had become familiar to her in this town. There was Hitch in a pinstripe suit and black tie, his eyewear toned down to a chunky black frame. There was Dr. Baker, elegant as always in an understated black dress. Her perfect posture radiated a soothing calm, but her eyes were puffy and bloodshot from crying. There was Doris, her makeup even heavier than usual, wearing a lace flower dress, a gaudy turtle broach clipped to her breast. There was Ricky Redfern with his silver hair pulled back into a ponytail, his best denim shirt tucked into a stiff pair of Wranglers. There was Darryl Hargrove, already dabbing at his sweaty forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief. She even spotted the beady-eyed girl from the Dairy Godmother sitting with the Safeway checkout boy. Their hands were barely clasped in a strange loose hold, as if they were mimicking something they had seen in movies.
At the back of the sanctuary, Ben stood by the open chapel doors, dressed in his uniform. His beard was recently trimmed and his hair was parted neatly on one side. He gave Kris a sad smile. She recalled something he had said to her on the night she found Poppy, that recovering her body was the best outcome he had ever hoped for. He knew in his gut that she would never be found alive. “This is the best of the worst,” he had said.
The best of the worst.
Kris glanced over the tear-streaked faces in the crowd. The town had come together to say good-bye to their lost girl. They would cry their tears and hold each other close and feel themselves bound by a much-needed sense of closure. But burying Poppy Azuara would not bring their small town back to life. It would go on dying, forgotten in a river basin just a little too far off the main highway. There would be more reasons in the future for them to come together as a community, but it would only serve to distract them from the fact that they were living a tragedy.
And Ben Montgomery would be there to stand with them.
A breath thumped the microphone as Pastor Charles began to speak. “On behalf of the Azuara family, I want to thank you all for coming today as we pay our last respects to our beloved Poppy.”
A chorus of sniffles and soft moans rose up from the congregation.
“She was an angel in life, so it is no surprise that God our Lord has called her back to be an angel at his side in heaven.”
Not by God, she thought.
Soon Pastor Charles was deep in an anecdote about fishing for trout at Roscoe Lake, followed by a clunky transition into the Bible verse that formed the core of his sermon:
“Revelation. Chapter 21. Verse 4.” He paused dramatically, glancing down at the open Bible before him, and then in a booming voice, he read: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.”
Kris knew the rest of this story, the part that Pastor Charles conveniently left out. Seven angels had broken seven seals, and when they sounded their trumpets, death and destruction rained down on earth. Kris couldn’t help but make the connection: years ago a seal had been broken in Pacington. Something had rushed up from the depths. And in all that time, during all the pain and suffering, heaven was silent.
Up a short path from Hope Church was Fairview Cemetery. From the state of the oldest headstones, their edges chipped and crumbling, this had been the main resting place for the town’s residents since its founding. A surprising amount of land was tucked back in a stretch of lowlands not visible from the road. Gravel paths cut seemingly at random through sections of graves.
Kris held Sadie’s hand as they followed the progression lead by Jesse, Ben, and four more pallbearers carrying a much-too-small coffin.
“We don’t have to stay for this,” Kris told Sadie.
She shrugged and murmured, “I want to.” Then, as if she’d completely forgotten why they were there in the first place, she asked, “What was her name again?”
“Poppy.”
“Was she a little kid?”
“Yes.”
“Like me?”
Kris took a sharp breath. “Yes,” she admitted.
“Can kids die?” She asked the question not out of concern but simple curiosity.
“Everybody can die,” Kris said.
The group reached a small patch of grass near the swaying arms of a willow tree. Green fabric had been laid down to cover the bare dirt of the recently dug grave. Straps of poly webbing were stretched across the hole to support the casket until it was time to lower it down.
Kris watched as Jesse, Ben, and the pallbearers carefully set Poppy’s coffin down on the straps. Jesse stepped back beside Camilla. Their faces were completely slack, as if they had cried all they could in the past three days. Behind them, an elderly man in a well-worn suit reached up and put a hand on Jesse’s shoulder. He looked familiar to Kris, and it took a moment of intense searching to remember where she had seen him. It was Albert Bell, the man who made it his duty to keep downtown free of weeds. Sarah Bell’s grandfather. Kris glanced over the faces of the others gathered around Albert and a terrible understanding fell over her.
It’s the families. Of the other lost girls. Sarah and Ruby and Megan. They’re here to welcome Jesse and Camilla to the club.
She hated herself for the crudeness of the thought, but that’s what it was: a club none of them had ever wished to join.
Sadie tightened her grip on Kris’s hand. Kris looked down at her daughter, green eyes peering out of her sweet freckled face, and she was suddenly struck by an intense sense of guilt. Her daughter was alive.
She waited for the other voices in her mind to speak up, for the shadow voice to mock her—to say all of this, this is your fault—and the timid voice to judge her—maybe if you hadn’t abandoned her, they would still be alive—but they held their tongues.
The rest of the ceremony was a blur. Soon the pallbearers were lowering the casket down into the ground. Hitch stepped forward with a small stack of chapter books, which he handed to Camilla. If she had thought she had shed every last tear, she was wrong. At the sight of the books, Camilla began to sob. They must have been some of Poppy’s favorites, Kris assumed, perhaps the books the little girl had read when her parents took her to the Book Nook.
If Poppy had lived, she would have been around fourteen years old. Just starting high school. Experiencing the astounding awkwardness of first crushes, the pain of first heartbreak, the strength that came as wounds healed and turned to scars. Kris wondered: What if someone else had been on the lake in Kris’s place? Could the power that rose from the depths have become an angel instead of a demon?
Violet wasn’t a demon, Kris thought. Not at first. She was a child. This world turned her into something else.
Kris did not see Jesse until he was almost past them. He seemed to spot Sadie out of the corner of his eye and stopped suddenly, kneeling down to speak to her in a hushed tone. For the first time, Kris realized that there was something clutched in his hand: a plush Beanie Boo dog with large blue eyes and brown spots across its back.
“This was my daughter’s,” he told Sadie. He turned the animal over in his hand, then held it out for Sadie to take. “Can you love him as much as she did?” he asked.
Sadie took the dog and clutched it to her chest.
“I’ll try,” she said.
That’s all you can do, Kris thought as she watched Jesse walk away.
Kris had just slammed the back hatch shut and was coming around to the driver’s side when she saw Dr. Baker. The doctor stood, tall and strong, at the corner of Maple and Center, waiting for one of the few streetlights to change despite the lack of traffic. She met Kris’s gaze.
“Hi there,” Kris called out as she forced a smile.
Dr. Baker walked the half block down to where Kris’s car was parked in the new house’s short driveway. She pursed her lips, as if unsure what to say. Finally she offered an innocuous, “Leaving town?”
Kris gave a sharp laugh.
Is there any other option?
“Yeah,” she said. “Heading back to Colorado.”
Dr. Baker nodded, considering this. “I really wish we could have talked more while you were here, but …” Her words trailed off. There was no way to finish that sentence.
“Maybe next time,” Kris said.
A wry smile spread across Dr. Baker’s face. “You’re never coming back, are you?”
Kris shook her head. “Not a chance.”
Dr. Baker leaned over and looked through the windshield at Sadie in the passenger seat. She gave an exaggerated wave, and Sadie waved back.
“Well,” Dr. Baker said, but she made no effort to leave.
“What?” Kris asked. She knew there was nothing Dr. Baker could say that would shock her. Not anymore.
Dr. Baker sighed. “The other night, the night that …”
Kris nodded, understanding.
“You left me a message,” Dr. Baker continued. “You were upset.”
“I was,” Kris said.
“You needed to talk.”
“I did.”
“But something distracted you. You didn’t finish the message. But it kept recording.” She clenched and released her fists. She did not want to admit what she was about to say. “I heard it, Kris. Someone singing. Two girls singing. Children. There in the house with you.”
Kris kept her gaze steady, unwavering. She knew what she believed. She needed to hear it from the doctor.
“I need you to tell me who that was,” Dr. Baker said finally.
In the Jeep, Sadie impatiently shifted in her seat.
“It was Violet,” Kris said suddenly.
Dr. Baker’s brow furrowed and she took a step back as if attempting to physically reject the statement.
“You’ll never get over your loss if you don’t accept the reality of what happened,” she told Kris.
Kris smiled, but there was no humor in it.
“Thank you,” she said. “For everything you do.”
On their way out of town, Kris stopped by the lake house. They drove in silence under a blazing sun in a cloudless blue sky. The heat was back, but not quite as bad as in days past. Kris rolled the window down and let the lake air whip through their hair and down the backs of their shirts.
The house was neither as rundown nor as romanticized as Kris remembered. It simply was. With its crooked shingles, flaking paint, and a yard overrun by native plants, it was downright quaint. Even the headless stone bird perched atop the birdbath seemed to add character to the place.
Kris told Sadie that it was okay if she wanted to stay in the car and play on the iPad, but Sadie was out of the Jeep before Kris could reach for the door handle.
“Can I play on the swings?” Sadie asked.
A pang of fear hit Kris in the chest. She turned and looked at Sadie’s wide, hopeful eyes.
“Sure,” she said. “Just stay on the swings. Promise?”
“Promise,” Sadie replied.
Kris waited until Sadie had disappeared around the side of the house, and then she trudged up the brick path to the front porch. She slipped the key into the lock and opened the door.
There was no foul odor of rot and decay, only the musty scent of a house in need of airing. She stepped through the narrow foyer and into the kitchen. Despite a layer of fresh dust, the floors gleamed in the bright sunlight.
Kris’s footsteps echoed as she walked through the great room. She paused at the far windows to check on Sadie. The girl was where she had promised to be, rising higher and higher on the swing, her legs pumping as if she meant to reach the sky.
In the hallway, Kris paused and glanced in the bathroom. The pills were no longer on the floor. Someone, probably Ben, had picked up each one and disposed of them. She smiled. He was one of the good ones.
The door to the master bedroom was still ajar, and Kris pushed it the rest of the way open. She peered in at the unmade bed and could see the edge of a wooden frame peeking out from underneath it. She entered the room, crouched down beside the bed, and slid the frame out into the light. At the center of the painting, the little girl stood at the end of the dock, one eye peering out through wind-blown hair. She no longer seemed to be looking past Kris but straight at her.
Kris paused, considered taking the picture with her, then shoved it back into the shadows under the bed. It could stay there forever, where no one would see it again. She had no intention of ever returning to the lake house, nor did she plan on letting Hargrove try to rent it out. The massive summer crowds drawn to the cool waters of Lost Lake were a thing of the past. The town was dying. The house could die with it.
Let it rot, she thought, and she imagined she could smell sawdust and liquor on the air.
The walk up the stairs was more difficult than she had expected. Each step felt heavier than the last. When she reached the second-floor landing, she paused to catch her breath as if she had just hiked to the summit of a mountain. She stared across the room at the small square door in the wall. Its door was open just a crack.
Kris moved through the gallery of ghosts covered in sheets on either side. She bent down beside the small door and took hold of its handle. She paused. What did she expect to happen when she opened it? To feel a rush of power and know that Violet was still there? To sense the touch of her mother’s hand on her shoulder? To hear the howls of those who had gone missing because of the thing she wished into existence?
She opened the door and heard nothing.
Silence.
She felt nothing.
It was the best feeling in ages.
The creak of chains greeted Kris as she stepped out onto the back deck. Sadie was still on the swings, although she had slowed to a leisurely rhythm that paired well with their view of the lake. The second swing—the empty swing—jostled slightly, but its movement was caused only by the tug of the chain on the swing set’s crooked frame.
“Just a couple more minutes,” Kris called to her.
“Okay,” Sadie said. She pumped her legs harder in an effort to milk every last second.
Kris looked out at the sparkling waters of Lost Lake. She had to admit, it was beautiful. She knew that at either end, the brownish-green current of the Verdigris River collided with this unintended body of water, but here, nestled against the red hills, the water was as clear as a diamond. She could not explain it. Perhaps being trapped below the earth for eons had filtered out its imperfections. Perhaps it was the fact that, at its center, the floor of the lake was mostly stone. Or perhaps it was because the water came from another place, a crack in the world. Perhaps its coldness was the price they paid for its clarity.
Sudden movement pulled Kris out of her thoughts.
There was someone across the cove, between the swaying vines of two weeping willow trees. A dark-haired woman standing on the deck behind a rustic cabin. At her side was a younger woman in her early twenties. Their arms were around each other as they took in the effortless glory of the lake.
The dark-haired woman looked up, and even from that great distance, Kris could see her lips stretch into a smile.
She waved. And Kris waved back, good-bye.
They drove away from River’s End just as they had arrived, with the lake sparkling through the trees at their side and puffs of cottonwood blooms drifting through the air. Sadie sat in her booster behind the passenger seat, Bounce on her lap, his head bobbing gently on his limp neck.
As they reached the highway out of town, Kris recognized an approaching car and flashed her lights, signaling for it to pull over.
Deputy Montgomery obliged, turning his cruiser onto the shoulder so that Kris could idle up next to the driver’s-side window.
“I’m usually the one pulling people over,” he said, smirking. Then he asked, “You off?”
Kris nodded. “Yeah. Just stopped by the lake house to …”
“Yeah,” he said, completing a thought that required no explanation.
“Thanks,” Kris told him. “For everything.”
Ben shrugged. It was all part of his job, even the things he could not quite explain.
“You know,” she said, “with that beard, you’d do pretty well in Colorado.”
Ben smiled. “Might have to head out that way some time. But my job’s here.”
Kris nodded, understanding. She eased off the brake, preparing to pull out onto the highway.
“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown,” she told him. And then she was gone.
They passed through the red gypsum hills, and the town of Pacington fell away behind them. The rocky slopes on either side grew wider as the hills sloped down to meet the Kansas prairie.
She thought of home. She thought of the life that would be waiting for them there. She thought of the days to come. She wondered if she would ever love again. She cringed at the thought of online dating profiles. Life in Black Ridge would not be easy for Sadie. The kids would know her as the girl with the dead dad. But Kris was sure that Sadie could hold her own. They would face the ghosts of the past and their fears of the future together. They would know that any earthly challenge would pale in comparison to what they had been through.
From the back seat came the sound of a child giggling.
Kris glanced in the rearview mirror. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Sadie replied. She looked out the window, her face reflected in the glass, eyes checking to see if her mother was still watching.
The whir of the car’s wheels was hypnotic. Kris reached out and punched the stereo’s power button. The digital tuner began to roll through fields of static, searching for a station.
She checked the rearview mirror again, and saw that Sadie’s left hand was resting between the seats, her palm up and open, as if she were waiting for another hand to take it.
On the stereo, a voice tried to break through the static, then was left behind as the tuner continued its quest. She glanced quickly over her shoulder. Sadie’s hands were clasped in her lap around Bounce. She was leaning forward, a smile playing at her lips as she peered through the windshield.
Stop, Kris thought. It’s over.
Up ahead was the old railroad bridge they had passed under on their way into town. Vines crept over its rusted metal. Through the tangle of leaves, Kris spotted the graffiti that had caught Sadie’s eye.
Kris had said they were names painted on the side of the bridge. She had been right, although only now did the names have meaning.
Ruby.
Megan.
Poppy.
The names of the lost.
In bright neon colors, someone had memorialized a small town’s grief.
You’re part of the club, too, she realized. It took her a moment to understand her own thought. True, she had not lost Sadie, but there was another little girl who went missing one summer, over thirty years ago. Little Krissy, who had loved her mother with all her heart. Little Krissy, who watched a ruthless disease devour the woman who had given her life. Little Krissy, who accidentally created a monster and paid the price with her childhood.
She was the first and last of the lost girls.