I SEEMED TO BE standing outside myself, hovering at a safe distance nearby. I saw myself move like a sleepwalker, looking around in dismay as if I couldn’t recall where I was or how I’d come to be there. The child behind me had eyes that saw clearly in the dark, and as a cold gust of wind toyed with the low flame of the lantern, I felt myself descending in a dizzying rush, coming to consciousness again with hands that groped aimlessly, seeking something to hold.
“Where’s Micah?” I heard myself say, but the child didn’t seem to hear, and the words came again, ripping from my throat with a ferocity that shocked me. “Girlie, what did you do with Micah?”
The round luminous eyes widened in helpless emotion—so quick I couldn’t read them—pain? fear?—and without warning, Girlie turned and fled back through the woods, swallowed up into the night.
“Girlie!” I screamed, and it wove through the trees, twisting itself back to me, taunting me with echoes of my fear. Girlie…Girlie…
I turned back to the stinking corpse at my feet.
There was a patch of gray, lighter than the rest, beginning to form along the treeline, sleepy shadows beginning to slink away. I felt a brief moment of panic for what I still had to do. I held my breath, trying not to gag, then I took up my shovel once more and went to work.
No wonder he hadn’t come! No wonder he was later than he’d ever been before, and no one could understand why! Except someone had understood, I realized grimly, someone had understood because that person had killed Dewey before he could take me away from here.
I sucked in my breath, my stomach churning dangerously. What had happened to him, to have put a hole that size in him? A shotgun? I knew there were guns on the farm, I’d seen Seth carrying them, both shotguns and rifles, but I had no idea what a gunshot wound looked like in real life. On TV a shotgun could blow a hole in someone the size of a cannonball…but would a little girl know how to use a shotgun?
Realizing what I had just considered, I paused for breath, shocked at the workings of my mind. I had been here too long, I was beginning to think crazy like all of them, consider crazy impossibilities as if they happened every day. Of course Girlie couldn’t have done this, she was only a child…but just last night you really wanted to believe she had powers…you came here tonight to see if she’d raised Micah from the dead…
Oh, God, I truly am losing my mind. Yes, I had come here to prove something, but not that Girlie had brought Micah back. I had come to prove that she hadn’t. That she couldn’t. So what could I conclude about her now?
I stabbed my shovel, scooping furiously, flinging dirt into the hole with a new and surprising strength. Girlie had said that Micah couldn’t sleep, and I had wanted to believe—so badly—that she had only been referring to his tortured mind. But then the noises had come…noises that three of us had heard. And something had followed me into the barn that night…had tried my bedroom door…had gotten to Franny. What had she felt in those last horrible seconds of sanity…looking up at a walking cadaver…realizing her request had been granted…I shook my head fiercely, clearing away the unwanted images. For the hundredth time I told myself it couldn’t happen. For the hundredth time I told myself it was impossible.
Then what had happened to Micah?
I froze as a new thought struck me. Could I have opened the wrong grave? Could someone have found Dewey’s body and buried it here and I’d dug up the wrong spot? I whirled around, straining my eyes in the paling light. There were other mounds, all covered with white, all identical in the dark and in the snow. I’d been so sure that Micah’s grave was this one, but could I have been mistaken? What if it was the one next to this one? Or that one over there? The earth on this grave had been freshly turned, but suppose there was another grave I’d missed, with earth just as freshly dug.
I leaned on the shovel, catching my breath. Maybe the explanation was so simple, I was missing it completely. Maybe Dewey had had an accident. Been attacked by a wild animal. Fallen, impaled himself on a tree or a rock. Shot by someone hunting. Maybe someone here. Seth? Could Seth have mistaken him for an animal and accidentally killed him? Or maybe Seth had found Dewey’s body lying somewhere on the property and brought it back here to be buried. Yet if that was the case, why hadn’t he told anyone about it? Especially Rachel, who was worried about why Dewey hadn’t come…and me who wanted to go home.
Maybe someone doesn’t want you to leave.
My hands tightened around the shovel again, slippery with sweat; my mind spinning back, full circle. Who then? Girlie? Just last night she had told me she never wanted me to leave. Seth? Because of what had happened between us? But how could I really trust Seth, even now? How could I really be certain? Outwardly, he acted no different toward me now than he had before—“Ask Seth…he’s the one.”—Oh Franny, what were you trying to say?
As for Rachel, she hadn’t wanted me to leave because she’d desperately needed my comfort and friendship, yet she’d also understood my yearning to go home. My mind ticked off possibilities, then slowed, growing uneasy. Franny. Franny had been angry with me, hadn’t wanted me to leave without taking her along. But lately she’d seemed to have forgiven me; we’d been friends again. And then sadly I thought of Micah. Yes, it could have been Micah…Micah whose plans to kill me had been spoiled by Seth…Micah who might have only been waiting for another chance—a chance that would never come again if Dewey arrived to take me away.
My thoughts were going out of control. If Micah had killed Dewey, he would have had to have done it before his own death. Then, where had Dewey’s body been until now? I knew for a fact that there hadn’t been any other new graves here except Micah’s on the day of the funeral. Had Seth found it since then, maybe abandoned somewhere in the woods where Micah had left it? Then why hadn’t he buried Dewey away from here, along with Micah’s other victims? Had he intended to keep it a secret forever, never telling Rachel why Dewey never came, letting her wonder why they never saw him again?
There was one other possibility, of course.
I forced a sob down in my throat and slapped the dirt hard with the back of the shovel, packing it down as if I could keep that awful thing from ever clawing its way free. It was a possibility that had whispered to me all along, raising gooseflesh along my arms, making me glance continuously over my shoulder to check the shadows, the trees, the drifts of snow, each silent shape-shifter.
Dewey could have been killed since the funeral…no!—killed by hands that had groped and clawed up from the blackness…no!—spirited out by the haunting voice of a child…oh God no, I won’t think this way…I won’t!—propelled down a dark hallway, into a bedroom where Franny had slept and screamed a soundless scream…hello, Franny, I’m back just like you wanted…
“No!” My voice shattered the silence, and I scrambled for the lantern, not bothering to cover it, only wanting to get away, to run, to escape from this hellish place and find a world that was safe, where people were normal and things made sense.
“Seth!” I cried, and I was running through the woods, tripping over the shovel as it dragged clumsily, weighing me down, and I couldn’t imagine what had happened to him, why he had been gone for so long, why I needed him so much…
I had thought it was Seth at first. Back there mangled in the coffin. Before I’d had a chance to really see the face, before I’d even had time to react, I’d had the horrible feeling that it was Seth lying there, and my heart had died a thousand deaths, unable to take the pain of losing someone one more time.
“Seth,” I gasped, breaking through the trees at last, extinguishing the lantern as I ran because the sky was growing lighter now, pale enough to see by, and how would I ever, ever be able to explain what I’d just done—what I’d just found—the unspeakable horror of it all—
I flung everything into the barn and ran toward the house, my mind frantically trying to retrace the steps I’d taken in the dark—the floorboards to avoid—the walls not to touch. For all I knew Rachel might be up this very minute, watching from her window, standing by her door, ear to the crack, listening…wondering.
I didn’t even stop to check on Franny. I went by Girlie’s door without a word. I saw her again, a slip of shadow poised to flee, that strangely unreadable glow in her huge eyes. Why did you run so, Girlie, did you realize at last what you’d done? I shut my door behind me and braced my back against it, heart pounding.
I will bring something back…
Unable to control my trembling, I crawled beneath the covers, my body stiff from wet and cold, burning from overworked muscles. I still felt the imprint of the shovel in my hands. I still smelled the stench of death.
My eyes wandered to the window, remembering other times I’d stood there looking out, alerted by movements slipping stealthily through the trees. Something—someone—had watched me then. Was it watching me now?
Dawn came, bringing a soft flurry of snow, and I watched it numbly, knowing it would fall upon the graveyard and hide my desecration.
Exhaustion crept over me…a slow buffer of shock between me and the truth…
Through a haze I heard Girlie talking to herself as she moved about in her room next to mine.
For Franny there would be no morning.
And where was Micah?