The day I met Jennifer, she was sitting on her front porch staring up at the sky. She did that a lot. I lived around the corner, but the street was short, so our houses were adjacent. I could look out my bedroom window and see the back of her house—which was exactly where her bedroom window was. One time we tried to connect tin cans on a string to make an old-school telephone, some build-it-yourself prompt we found in a Nickelodeon magazine. It didn’t work; the string was way too short, but we each kept our can as a kind of memento to our experiment.
I was coming home from basketball practice. She was one of the only kids who didn’t participate in some sort of after-school activity. The other girls said she was too fat or weird—all the explanation needed for outcast status in the nineties—but my dad told me to go easy on her. Her mother worked nights, he said, and they probably couldn’t afford it.
That stuck with me. Compassion can be a completely foreign idea at that age, but I remember feeling this tug, this connection to Jen. In a world where nuclear families reigned supreme, finding someone who knew the unique kind of sadness that comes with being the kid without a parent at a class recital is rare. None of my other friends understood what it was like to budget or buy generic.
Anyone who could handle Toaster-Tarts was okay in my book.
So, instead of walking past her, I hitched my ball under my arm and stopped. “Whatcha lookin’ at?” I remember asking her.
“Water tower,” she said after a minute. The big blue water tower stood at the top of the hill. Shaped like an oval—or an eye, as I imagined—it was a neighborhood landmark. Unmoving and reliant. No matter which direction you entered Albany from, its powder blue orb marked the way home.
It’s still there today, more brown than blue, but just as present.
“Oh. Cool,” I said.
Sometimes, I miss the days when all it took to make a friend was a single word. No asterisks or terms or conditions, years away from festering secrets that disintegrate pieces of your soul in the middle of the night. That’s what no one ever tells you about friendships. They can be great, sure, but they can also create the scariest monsters of all.
“Want to hang out?” she asked.
“Sure, but I can’t be out past dark.”
“Me neither.” Jen smiled then and brushed her dirty blonde hair out of her eyes. She’s platinum now, which suits her, but it’s hard to picture her as anything but dirty. “I’m actually playing a game.”
“What kind of game?” I asked. We were in second or third grade. Games meant hopscotch and TV Tag and, my personal favorite, Ghost in the Graveyard. Drew tells me that no one else knows what that game is. Most kids played SPUD or Red Rover and hide-and-seek. We, however, chased each other pretending that if we were caught by “The Ghost,” we joined the dead and were doomed to haunt the earth until someone who was “alive” tagged us back in, saving us from immortal damnation. Last one alive won.
Simple.
Our games always took on a note of the macabre, it seemed. And here we are, twenty years later, playing the same game. But instead of bragging rights, I’m trying to save a child from a fate worse than haunting.
“Do you remember the vampire hunt?” I ask.
Jen chuckles. “Blast from the past, Emme, wow. Haven’t thought about that woman in ages. She was pissed.”
“Well, you did accuse her of being a vampire.”
“She had purple eyes and only came out of her house after the sun went down. What other explanation could there have been?”
“She was old,” I say. “Maybe she had cataracts.”
“You were the one who hung garlic on her stoop.”
“You told me to. It was better than sharpening those twigs into stakes,” I say in defense.
“A necessity when fighting bloodthirsty vampires. What did you want me to use? Popsicle sticks?”
We come to a storm entrance, and our childhood slips quietly back into its box. I study it, the rusted latches and splintering boards. “Could she have come out through there?” I ask.
“Technically, sure, but it’s been locked since we moved in. I don’t even know where the key is for it, and we’ve got so much stuff in the basement, I doubt the kids could even get to the door in the first place.” Jen points to an open second-story window. “That one,” she says. “Her room was freezing. Chloe hates being cold.”
I estimate the distance from the ground to the bottom of Abby’s window to be between twenty and twenty-five feet.
“Hm,” I say, parsing through options. There’s no eave. No gutter close enough to shimmy down. She could’ve jumped and survived, but the breaks would’ve been nasty—and there’s no way she did any of that in complete silence. But maybe she didn’t have to. JJ got in without being heard which makes it just as likely that Abby could sneak out without anyone realizing. But why leave her phone? Why the open window?
On the other hand, an unlocked door would provide easy access for an abductor. How easy would it be for someone to stake out the Cates house? Figure out their routine and pick apart their weak spots? What could be easier than slinking through an unlocked door in the middle of the night?
Above us, the curtains flutter with movement as someone photographs the window seams, the flat sill, carefully pulling down the screen in search of fingerprints. I’m curious about their findings, but my skepticism is growing. I just don’t see how someone could’ve abducted her through the window without disturbing the area.
Slowly, I pace alongside the house toward the deck, eyes fixed to the ground, searching for footprints or signs of struggle.
Nothing.
I reach the deck stairs, Jennifer trailing behind me, and head down the hill toward the fence. When I was a kid, Patrick and I used to search for four-leaf clovers. It seemed like every time we walked to the field, he’d find one, but no matter how much I strained, I always came up short.
You’re trying too hard, he said on one such occasion. Let your eyes relax. See the bigger picture. If you try not to focus on any individual leaf, your brain will pick up the shamrock that’s not like the others.
One in ten thousand chance, but it worked. After a few minutes, I saw a deviation, an extra leaf. I heed his advice now, letting my mind clear and ignoring the urge to study each individual blade of grass. The bigger picture. What am I really seeing? Footprints? More than one set? It’s possible, and I don’t want to take chances. We’ll need forensics to perform their magic.
“Hey, Downy, you still there?” I call.
The door slides and he steps out. “What’s up?”
I meet him halfway up the hill. “Get a headcount of who’s available. I want two guys canvassing the neighborhood and a search team prepped. Loop DL Suter in, too, so he’s not blindsided by the news, all right? And get someone from forensics here to tape off the yard.”
A hand on my bicep, and I jump.
Jennifer retracts, but the feeling of her grip, strong and unexpected, burns through my jacket.
“Sorry, I—what’s going on?” she asks.
“You should go inside,” I say. “Wait with your family, and I’ll be in to speak with you momentarily.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Downy gives me an inquisitive look. “Stay with Mrs. Scarborough,” I say.
Jennifer calls my name like a broken record.
Concentrate, I tell myself.
What am I really seeing? Jen said they use the area beyond the fence for gardening. Photo shoots. It’s not out of the question then that there’d be a discernible trail that withstood the winter thaw.
Something catches my attention as I’m turning for the deck, and I freeze, tilting my head to make sure it’s not just a trick of the light.
A blotch. A smear of brownish red the size of a quarter.
Blood?
“Shit,” I mutter. Now that I’ve seen it, there’s no mistaking it. Like the viral dress that was definitely black and blue until someone pointed out the white and gold; then you couldn’t unsee it.
There’s more. Dots varying in shape and size splattered around the opening in the fence.
“What?” Jen asks. “What is it?”
Two officers make their way to me.
“Watch your step,” I say. “Here, here, and here.” I point out the tracks and the blood. “Get this immediate area secured. Might want to set up some tents. Thanks. Let me know if you find anything else.”
“Search party should be ready for instructions in five,” Downy says, sweating despite the light wind and April chill. I realize I am too. He huffs and coughs into his fist.
“Thank you,” I say, lowering my voice. “Pretty sure we’ve got blood. Take her inside with you, please. I’ll be up for a briefing in five.”
Jen’s eager glare breaks through my concentration. “I’m right here, Detective Stone, don’t talk about me like I can’t hear you! What’s going on? Answer me!” Her pleas become hoarse. Frantic. Downy ushers her toward the house, but she fights him. I hear him tell her to calm down before I’m lost in my world again.
The largest spot I see stains the bottom of the fence post, a stark contrast to the sterile picket white. I squat for a closer look. There’s something stuck to the corner, mixed with the blood. Could be grass clippings or micro roots. I pull the pen from my pocket and loop it through the thin, chocolate brown strands.
Hair.
I see her, then. Abby, conjured from the depths of my imagination. Lifeless. Her beautiful brown hair is knotted and clumped with dead leaves. Mud and blood slimes her ears, cheeks, and neck.
“Not real,” I tell myself.
Claws dig into her calves, monstrous and inhuman. Patches of the creature’s coarse bark-hair bristle against Abby’s exposed skin. Pustules form and burst from the pressure. Its chest balloons out and sinks in, revealing chunky outlines of organs, cartilage, and bones.
There are no horns, no forked tongues, but I recognize the evil for what it is.
I blink repeatedly until the air clears and the dark side of my imagination finally goes back to sleep, but the omen lingers in my peripheral vision. Not quite visible, but always there.
Promise me.
I signal one of the guys to collect the hair sample, but there’s no denying the strands are the same color as Abigail Scarborough’s.
With a shudder, and before I lose my resolve, I step beyond the fence.