All The Pretty Dead Girls (19 page)

All Tish Lewis knew was that it was dark.

And cold.

How long had she been in this place? And where exactly
was
she?

She had long since stopped screaming. All it had done was leave her throat sore and throbbing. No one had come in response to her screams, not even that red-robed figure that brought her meals twice a day and hauled away the smelly pail that Tish used for a toilet. At first she wouldn’t eat—fearful that she would be poisoned—but then sheer hunger had overtaken her and she’d wolfed down the bread and raw vegetables with a savagery she hadn’t known she possessed.

When was that? A week ago? Two? Time meant nothing in the face of endless night. Tish begged the figure in the red robe to let her out of the room, but the figure never spoke. It just clamped the iron door shut as it left, and Tish could do nothing but shiver and cry in the dark.

Why? Why was she being held?

Ransom? That’s what she thought at first. Someone had kidnapped her and was demanding money from her father. But that was before she began to hear the chanting through the door. The terrible singing.

That was before she heard the scream.

It was a girl’s scream. She knew that. And she thought she knew who the girl was, too.

Her roommate, Joelle.

That’s when this had started. Between bouts of utter terror, when all Tish could do was cry and shake, she tried to force herself to remember the events that had led up to her being brought to this room. She had gotten a voice mail from Joelle. Her roommate’s words were burned into her brain:

I’ve heard it. The screaming. Oostie took me into the room. I think she’s in on it—all of them maybe—

And then the message had ended abruptly.

Tish sat in the dark, on the moist earthen floor, and held her knees, rocking a little as she once again tried to remember.
I went back to the dorm after getting Joelle’s message. She wasn’t in the room. I went out into the hallway and saw the door to Room 323 was open. I stood in the doorway and looked in.

And I saw—

And I saw—

“What did I see?” Tish whispered to herself.

She knew it was horrible—something far beyond her comprehension—and it had terrified her. More than terrified her. It had overcome her. She had screamed, passed out, and woken up here in this place. Her mind would not allow her to remember exactly what she had seen. Or, more accurately, what she had seen had been so terrible, so beyond description, that her brain lacked capacity to fully comprehend it.

Tish began to cry again. She was starting to lose hope that she’d ever get out of this room alive. What worried her most now was
how
her death would come, not if. They had taken her for a reason—they’d taken Joelle, too, and Tish was certain it was Joelle’s scream of death that she had heard. They’d taken both girls to kill them.

But who “they” were and why they wanted to kill them was unknown. And it was the unknown that Tish feared most.

Perry Holland was worried about his father.

As September turned into October, the leaves turned from green to vibrant shades of orange before they dropped from the trees. The days grew shorter and the wind colder, and Sheriff Miles Holland seemed to be aging right before Perry’s eyes. It was as though he’d woken up one day to discover that his father had turned into an old man overnight. The circles under the sheriff’s eyes had grown deeper and darker, his hairline seemed to move back an inch at a time every week, and more and more lines carved themselves into his face. Worse still was the emotional aging. Sheriff Holland didn’t seem to pay attention when people talked to him. A look of complete indifference settled on his face. Sometimes, words had to be repeated to him more than once, and he’d forget what you told him in a moment.

Sheriff Holland had always take great pride in his job, and in the uniform he wore. But ever since Bonnie Warner disappeared, Perry thought, his father’s uniforms had become increasingly wrinkled, and sometimes even looked dirty. Sometimes, he went days without shaving—and started skipping showers as well. Often, Miles would sit in his office for hours, just staring into space. People in the sheriff’s department were starting to whisper. Sometimes, Perry would walk into a room where his coworkers were talking, and they would suddenly fall quiet, and he knew they were talking about his father.

He hasn’t really been himself since Mom died,
Perry thought as he turned his patrol car down the street where he’d grown up.
But it’s gotten worse—far worse—in the last month and a half.

His sense of unease heightened when he turned into the driveway. Several weeks’ worth of newspapers were yellowing on the lawn, which hadn’t been mowed in weeks. The flower beds his mother had taken such great pride in were overgrown with weeds.

Perry turned the ignition off in the car. It was nearly dark, with long shadows of pine trees cast across the house. But still, Dad hadn’t turned on any lights. Perry sat and stared at the place where he’d grown up. He had lived here until he moved into his apartment on the other side of town. This is where he’d watched Saturday morning cartoons, where Mom had made her fabulous pot roast on Sundays, where Dad had grilled ribs in the backyard, where Perry and his friends had watched football games on the weekend.

Dad never let the yard go like this, ever,
Perry thought.
Maybe it’s becoming too much for him. I should make more of an effort.

With a start, he realized he hadn’t set foot in his parents’ house since the gathering after his mother’s funeral. He saw Dad at work, and they often shared dinners at the Yellow Bird. But he had not been back to the house since the funeral. Perry took a deep breath.
I still associate the house with Mom. That’s why I can’t face it. But how much harder has it been for Dad to keep living here?

Perry was an only child; his birth had been hard on his mother, and they’d given her a hysterectomy before she brought him home. “They said I couldn’t risk another pregnancy,” his mother had told him once sadly. “I wouldn’t live through it.” They’d been a close family. If his parents had ever argued, Perry never witnessed it. Both of his parents had done the best they could, which, thinking back now, seemed very good indeed to Perry.

I’m a terrible son,
he thought, unable to budge from the car.
The last thing Mom said to me was, “Take care of your father.”

He forced himself to open the car door and headed up the walk. Kicking aside the damp leaves on the steps, he slipped his key into the lock, ringing the doorbell as he opened the door.

“Dad? It’s Perry.”

The living room was dark, the curtains drawn

“Are you here?”

“In the kitchen, son,” his father answered.

With a sigh of relief, Perry switched on the overhead light in the living room and headed to the kitchen in the back. His mother had always kept the kitchen spotless and neat. As he took in its condition now, Perry sighed. Dishes were stacked in the sink. The kitchen table was piled with papers. Something had gone bad in the fridge, but Dad didn’t seem to notice.

“Dad, what are you doing in here in the dark?”

His father was sitting at the kitchen table, straining his eyes as he read through a stack of papers in his hand.

Miles Holland looked up at him. “Oh, right. I guess I was so engrossed here I didn’t notice the sun had set.”

Perry switched on the lamp over the table. An amber light suddenly suffused the room. Perry looked down at the papers that were piled haphazardly. Old, battered file folders. A stack of newspaper clippings. Photocopies of photographs.

Perry sat down at the table. “Dad, I’m worried about you. Sitting here—”

His father waved a hand. “Son, I’m on to something.”

“Dad, look, you’re not eating, you’re not taking care of yourself…”

“Perry, I tell you. I’m on to something.”

His son made a face. “On to something about what?”

“The college,” Miles muttered, shuffling some papers around. “Those missing girls…”

“Dad, only one girl is missing. Bonnie Warner.”

“You’re wrong. Two more girls.” He pushed a report toward him stamped
TOP SECRET
.

Perry glanced down at it. “Joelle Bartlett…Patricia Lewis,” he read. “Dad, why didn’t you tell me?”

“As a favor to the college,” he said, clearly unhappy with the decision. “It was a state police call, not mine. An agreement was made to keep the disappearance of two more girls secret for now, so as not to panic the campus and the town.”

Perry was flabbergasted. “Dad, if people find out—hell,
when
people find out—they will be royally pissed. And with reason. If some maniac is running around abducting college girls, the public should know.”

“Yes, I agree. The dean understood that eventually this would come out, but he asked that we sit on the news for a bit.” He shook his head. “The muckety-mucks at State Police HQ agreed—but it’s a temporary decision.”

“How long have they been missing?”

Miles shrugged. “Not sure. The damn college administration is being cagy. They didn’t even make the report. It was the girls’ parents who got worried when calls they made to their daughters weren’t returned. Finally, they called the college, which at first said the girls were very busy with exams. Then, finally they admitted to the parents that they hadn’t been in class, but they’ve been vague for how long they’d been gone.”

“Jesus,” Perry said.

“And get this, Perry. The girls were roommates. And they lived right across the hall from the first girl who went missing—the one that left all the blood all over the street.”

“So you suspect a connection.”

Miles nodded. “The state is trying to take over the whole investigation. But I just can’t let the thing go.”

Perry sighed. He understood his father’s determination. Bonnie Warner’s disappearance still ate at
him,
too. He couldn’t forget seeing her at the Bird that night, when she’d turned down his offer for a ride. He’d followed up every lead he could, questioned everybody who was out on the road that night, hoping to find some clue.

“I’ve been digging,” his father told him. He began gathering the papers on the table into a pile. “Son, there’s a cycle…every twenty years or so.” Miles’s voice was animated, and he actually sounded like himself for the first time in weeks. “Something happens to the girls up there at the college every twenty years or so.”

“What are you talking about?”

Sheriff Miles laughed. “I know it sounds crazy. I’ve been thinking that myself for the last few weeks. But it’s been there in the back of my head all this time…when Bonnie Warner disappeared, I said to myself, ‘This has happened before…’”

“Dad, what do you mean?” Perry stared at his father. “A girl disappeared before from the college?”

“You don’t remember?” His father returned his stare. “You were young, but it made the news. It was twenty years ago, almost to the month.”

Perry closed his eyes for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “I vaguely remember a girl going missing there…it was right after you were elected sheriff.”

“That’s right. It was one of my first cases. Margaret Latham. An all-points bulletin went out searching for her.”

Perry was nodding. He had been just eleven years old, but he remembered the gruesome details. “They found her eventually, right…badly mutilated.”

“That’s right. Limbs cut off, blood drained. Body was dumped in Lake Bessett. No one ever charged with the crime.”

Perry shook his head. “But that hardly makes it a cycle, Dad. One girl’s murder doesn’t necessarily connect to the disappearances of three others twenty years later.”

“I have a long memory, Perry. That’s why I’ve made such a damn good sheriff. People forget things. But I remember. I make connections.” He handed Perry a sheet of paper. “I recalled that another girl was reported missing soon after Margaret Latham disappeared. See the report?”

Perry glanced down at it. “Yes, but this girl eventually turned up okay. It says here her parents told police she had run away from the college and returned home.”

“Yes…but
why
did she run away?”

“Come on, Dad, now you’re really starting to sound nutty…”

“I have a long memory!” he shouted. He seemed genuinely angry. “I’ve been in the vault, combing through all our old cases. I’ve been at the library, going through micro-filmed newspapers. This has been a recurring pattern at that school. I remember!”

He shoved a well-thumbed folder, cracking with age, across the table at Perry.

“If you read that, you’ll see that almost twenty years before Margaret Latham’s disappearance, there was another curious event at Wilbourne. People forget. But I remember.”

Perry leafed through the contents of the file. A girl in a 1960s flip hairdo smiled up at him from one photo. In another, she stared glassy-eyed at him, her face swollen in death. Perry shuddered.

“I had to really rack my brain to remember,” his father was saying, “but I did it. It was like there was something in there that kept me from remembering—that keeps everybody in this goddamn town from remembering. But still, I knew it was there. Deep down, the memory was there—and the files corroborated it.”

“Okay, so girls have gone missing or murdered from Wilbourne before. Still, to call it a cycle—”

“You need more, son? When I suspected I might be on to something, I went back again in the files. Sometimes it was twenty years. Sometimes it was only nineteen. But sure enough…” He began tossing files at Perry, who practically had to catch them in his arms, they came so fast. “1962. 1943. 1923. 1904.” Miles grunted. “That’s when the sheriff’s department was founded, so I don’t have records to go on before then. And the local newspaper only goes back to 1897. But how much do you want to bet, if we went down to the town clerk’s office, we’d find some death records of Wilbourne college girls—mysterious deaths—murders—circa 1884–1885?”

Perry leaned forward and placed his hand on his father’s forearm lightly. “Dad, I think you might be tired. Maybe you should go lay down, get some rest.”

“I don’t need any goddamn rest! I need to figure out what the hell is going on up at the school!”

Perry stood. “Have you eaten anything tonight, Dad? Let’s go get a chili burger and fries at the Bird—”

“Haven’t you heard what I’ve been telling you? Come on, Perry. You’ve got to admit this is too weird to just chalk up to coincidence.” He banged the table with his fist. “Explain why the townsfolk seem to forget. Explain why you didn’t remember Margaret Latham going missing until I reminded you.”

“Dad, I was eleven.”

“Then explain to me why the selectmen didn’t remember! Not even Veronica Thomas, whose father was the sheriff before me! She never called me to say, ‘Gee, Miles, this sounds a lot like that case we had eighteen years ago.’ Explain to me why no one in town seems to remember these things. Even more—why no one up at that goddamn school ever seems to wonder why every generation they lose two or three girls to violent deaths!”

Perry had to admit that was a very good question. Evidence of the girls’ deaths sat right there on his father’s kitchen table. But Wilbourne College had never acknowledged its recurring problem.

“Well,” Perry said, thinking out loud as much as responding to his father, “if they did acknowledge it, enrollment would certainly decline.”

Miles looked at him with a hard, intense stare. “I have a feeling enrollment is the least of their concerns.”

“Dad,” Perry said. “You think the school has something to do with the deaths, don’t you?”

“Or at least covering them up.”

The sheriff stood, rubbing his forehead.

“You okay, Dad?” Perry asked.

“Headaches,” Miles grumbled. “Too much reading.”

“Let’s go to the Bird. You need to get out of this house.”

The older man was still lost in thought, however. “The strangest part is why we don’t remember. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not like so much happens in this fucking town that you can’t remember something bad happening. At the time, these were all big news stories. I don’t understand it…it just doesn’t make any sense.”