Chapter Twenty

Grandma and Grandpa head to bed around ten thirty, after the local news. Snoring commences fifteen minutes later. I click around Netflix until eleven thirty—until my restlessness forces me to step outside and pace on the front porch. The old house stares at me. It knows I’m coming over.

Just before midnight, I rush across the street. A flick of a lighter shows in the far left window as I approach the front steps. I find the door unlocked again. The floor squeaks slightly as I step inside. “David?” I whisper into the dark, dank air.

“In here,” he says from the next room over. He doesn’t whisper. He’s not afraid.

But I am and tiptoe through the kitchen into the living room space, as if walking normally is going to set off some kind of supernatural uproar.

David is sitting in the corner on the living room floor. The zippo clicks on once again, but this time instead of closing it, he inserts it into a metal lamp of some type. Immediately, a bright glow illuminates from the lamp—so bright at first that I have to turn away and close my eyes. And when I reopen them, a white spot has been burned into my vision. He lights another lantern, then places them on either side of himself.

“Kerosene,” he says. “I used to use lanterns like these all the time. Didn’t get electricity until my second life.”

I make a face. “That means no air conditioning.”

He laughs. “I didn’t get that until the seventies.”

“God, the twentieth century must’ve sucked,” I mutter, making him laugh again.

The two lanterns hum quietly, filling the entire living room with a steady yellow light. On the floor in front of David sits a stack of papers, nearly a foot high. For a moment, I forget where I am—in the house of doom and gloom—and rush forward to the documents. I sit cross-legged across from him on the floor, eyes on the papers.

“What are all these?” I grab the top one. It’s a photocopy of a newspaper article from 1956. The headline reads: Local Authorities Receive Anonymous Tip on Villisca Murders.

“Two summers ago, I spent weeks looking at old newspapers and archived records, gathering as much information as I could on the murders.” He flashes a crooked grin. “I was feeling pretty gung-ho about it. Thought if I could hammer enough information into my brain, I could find some kind of loophole to my connection with it.” He flips his hands palms up. “Clearly, it didn’t work.”

“We still have time to save you.” I grab the next photocopy. Its headline is from 1924: A New Lead in the Moore Murders? “Whatever happened to Tommy?” I ask. “Did he come back to town?”

“Not that I know of. There’s no mention of him in anything I’ve ever read, but in a town like Villisca, not everything that happens becomes public record. Gossip has always ruled this town, and it’s hard to say what people knew back then. And in the years following the murders, by the time I turned thirteen in my second life and remembered the night of the murders, a lot of the folks who were around in 1912 had moved or died, or just didn’t want to talk about it anymore.”

I nod and begin reading the next article.

“I bet you wish you had never come here this summer,” David says.

I look from the paper to him, then back to the paper, unsure how to answer. “I don’t think any of it was up to me. I’m supposed to be here helping you. I’m a Carpenter, it’s what I need to do. Plus, all the crap with my parents and—” I cut myself off. I’ve said too much.

Concern crosses David’s face. “What’s wrong with your parents? Are they okay?”

I nod, but the movement is wrong. They’re not okay. Nothing’s okay.

“You can talk to me, ya know.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I say.

“Chessie, please tell me what’s going on.” He scoots closer until one of his knees touches mine. “It’s pretty obvious you’re not in town all summer just to see your grandma and grandpa. So what’s going on?”

I shake my head and don’t reply. A burning sensation grows behind my eyes, and despite clenching my muscles to stop it, hot tears well in my lower lids.

His fingers brush mine, resting against them for a moment. When I don’t pull away, he takes my hand in his, caressing it with his thumb. A quick thrill trails down my spine, spiking my entire emotional state. Everything whirls together—the delight of him holding my hand, the closeness of him, the confusion of his situation, and the pain of my torn-up family.

I force my mouth to remain closed. But the deluge of emotions is too much to hold back, and I burst open like a dam

“It’s my parents. They’re…” A tear drips onto the old paper, leaving a darkened splatter. I push through the lump in my throat, and when my mouth opens, years of frustration pour out. “They’re not okay; they’re getting a divorce. They fight every day, been doing it for years. You know why I’m in the school band? Not because music is my favorite thing; it’s because I’ve used the music to drown them out. I practice every single day, which they ironically praise me for, not knowing that I only practice because, when I play, I can’t hear them downstairs tearing apart our family with their shouting and disrespect. They say awful things to each other, then put on a smile when I come into the room, as if I couldn’t hear them. It’s like they don’t even try to get along. Not even for my sake. They sent me here because they’re up in Minneapolis finalizing the divorce. And when I move back in August, my mom will be out of the house, in a condo, not with us anymore.”

I suck in a deep breath, and my body shudders. My cheeks are wet, my eyes cloudy.

“They’re selfish assholes. My entire childhood has pretty much been layered with anger and resentment. My mom has always pushed me to be someone I’m not. She’s a ruthless lawyer and wants me to be like her—a demanding force to be reckoned with. But I’m not like that; I’m just…me. I think that disappoints her because we barely spend time together anymore. And then there’s my dad. His marriage has fallen apart, but he’s too damn passive to do anything about it. He’ll yell back at my mom when they argue, but he doesn’t really fight for what he wants. He just lets things slip away when life gets too hard and it pisses me off.”

David squeezes my hand, and he allows me to sit in silence for several minutes until my quivers calm and the tears stop.

“Sorry,” I say wiping my face with the backs of my hands.

“Don’t apologize,” he says. “I’m sorry about your parents. But I’m glad you told me.”

I stretch back, pulling my hand from his, and then re-do my messy bun. “I understand that my parents are just people, and I get that relationships don’t always work out. But it seems like they gave up the second it got hard. They didn’t even try.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to give up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like you’ve said before, you only have one year of high school left. Get through it and move on with your own life. Your parents will always be your parents, but you’re almost an adult and it’s okay to fight for yourself and your own future. Trust me, life is short. You have to make it better yourself. If you like the clarinet, play the clarinet. If you don’t like the sound of your parents fighting, throw the clarinet away and tell them to shut the hell up.”

I laugh, sending leftover tears down my cheek. “I’d love to see the look on my mom’s face if I told her to shut up. But you’re right and I’ve known that for a while—I have to concentrate on myself. I love my parents. I just don’t want to put up with them anymore.”

“Says every seventeen-year-old everywhere.”

“I guess you would know. My parents may have shipped me off to Iowa to get away from the realities of divorce, but I know why I’m actually here.” I pick up the next newspaper article. “I’m gonna save your ass.”

“Chessie, don’t put too much pressure on yourself to solve everything. It’s okay if—”

“Shut up and help me.”

He smiles and picks up another paper. “Yes, ma’am.”

I read the article in my hand. Then another. And another. Before long, half the floor is littered with papers as we read. There’s little sound except a mild wind against the windows and the quiet shuffling of papers. We say next to nothing, but the air is thick with our private thoughts.

Nothing in the articles and local documents seem helpful on the surface, yet I can’t stop reading. The murders, the crime scene, the family, the townspeople. Nothing had set this town apart from any other small town in the country—until that night. It’s as if the murders had shifted the ground under their feet. After the bloody ending of the Moore family and Stillinger girls, the village changed. People’s faith in each other had eroded; no one knew who to trust anymore.

I suppose as generations went on, things got back to normal. People went back to waving and smiling, and probably became less concerned with locked doors. But now, with the missing girls, it seems that distrust could be returning. Where are the girls? Will there be more taken? And who the hell took them?

For a town so small, there sure are a lot of unanswered questions…and a lot of untimely deaths.

I pry my eyes from the paper in my hand and look around the house. The doorway to the kitchen is behind me, and to the right of that is another doorway leading to a set of stairs. In the far corner of the living room a third doorway leads into another darkened room.

“David,” I say.

“Hmm?” he asks without looking up from his own piece of paper.

I stand, picking up a lantern by its thin metal handle. As it moves, the light disappears from David’s paper, leaving it blacked out. “Where did they die?”

He hesitates but gets to his feet. He grabs the other lantern and stares at the opening to the stairs. “Most of them were killed up there.”

“Show me.”