Sweet Little Lies (6 page)

I TiVo’d all three newscasts. (That second
TiVo box certainly comes in handy—ha!) The investigation is in its
beginning stages, but as you all know, this is my favorite moment,
the second most exciting part of the process. Will they trace her
back to me? NEVER! Long Live the Serial Maniac!

KOK. Over!

Monday, March 12

Mes Amis,

Just back from work and heard some very bad
news. Smail466 has been taken.

It would behoove all of you to delve deep
into your operating systems and remove his correspondence. I’ll be
deleting any trace of him from this site immediately. I know it is
difficult to do; Smail466 has been the harbinger of many excellent
tips and stories since the inception of this blog. But it cannot be
helped. He must be exorcised. Such a shame. That moniker, THE
BUTCHER OF MONS, was just so lovely. I doubt the Belgian
authorities ever realized the double entendre when they bestowed
the name.

But let that be a lesson to all you
newcomers. Smail466 made a tactical error and broke one of the
RULES. He left that print behind in New York fifteen years ago.
Always wear gloves, on your hands and on your pricks, mes amis. Why
does something so simple become the downfall for so many of us?

Keep On Killin’, and be careful! Over!

KILLING CAROL ANN

Spinetingler Magazine Fall 2006; First
Thrills: High-Octane Stories from the Hottest Thriller Authors,
edited by Lee Child, Forge Books 2010

I’ve just killed Carol Ann. Sweet, innocent
Carol Ann. Her blond hair flows down her back and trails in the
spreading pool of blood. What have I done?

***

I’ve known Carol Ann for nearly my whole
life. Every memory from my childhood is permeated by the blond
angel who moved in across the street when I was five or so.
Skipping up the street after the ice cream truck, getting lost in
the shadows during a game of hide and seek, watching her sit in the
window of her pink room, brushing that glorious hair. We were two
peas in a pod, two sides of the same coin. Best friends forever.
Forever just turned out to be an awful long time.

Our relationship started as benignly as you’d
expect. I’d seen the moving truck leave, knew that a family had
taken the Estes’ house. Mrs. Estes died, left her son with bills
and a dozen cats. I missed the cats. I’d wondered about the family,
then went back to my own world.

Carol Ann spied me sitting on our front step,
twirling my fingers through the dandelions in the flowerbeds. Mama
had sent me out to pluck the poor, insignificant weeds from the
ground, worried they’d ruin her prized flowers. Mama’s flowerbeds
were local legend. The best in three states. At least that’s what
the members of the garden club said about them. Full to the brim
with the heady blooms of gardenias, azaleas, jasmine, roses, sweet
peas, hydrangea, daylilies, iris, rhododendrons, ferns, fertile
clumps of monkey grass, a smattering of black-eyed Susans… the list
went on and on. A green thumb, Mama had. She could make any flower
grow and peak under her watchful gaze. All but me, that is. Her
Lily.

I was crying about something that day, I
don’t remember what. It was past 90 degrees, a sweltering summer
afternoon. A shadow cast darkness across my right foot. The sudden
shade caused a momentary cooling, so I looked up to see what had
caused it. A strange girl stood on the sidewalk in front of the
A-frame house I grew up in. A yellow haired goddess. When she
spoke, I felt a rush of love.

“Hey girl,” she said. “Would you like to
play?”

“Do I wanna play?” I answered, suddenly numb
with fright. I’d never had a playmate before. Most folks’ kids
steered clear of me. Mama’s garden club friends didn’t bring their
spawn to visit with me while they played canasta under the
billowing tent in the backyard. The nearest child my age was a
bed-ridden boy who smelled funny and coughed constantly. Mama made
me go over there once, but after I screamed as loud as I could and
pulled his hair, she didn’t make me go back. There was no one
else.

“Are you simple or something?” the girl
asked.

“Simple?”

“Oh, never mind.” She turned her back and
started away toward the river, skipping every third step. She wore
a white dress with a pink ribbon tied in the back in a big bow—the
kind I’d only ever wear on Easter, to go to church with Mama. Even
from behind, she was perfect.

“Wait!”

My voice rang as true and strong as it ever
had, deep as a church bell. She stopped, dead in her tracks, and
turned to me slowly. Her eyes were wide, bluer than Mama’s china
teapot. Then she smiled.

“Well. Who knew you’d sound like that? I’m
Carol Ann. It’s nice to meet you.”

She strode to me, her hand raised. I’d never
shaken hands with a girl my age before. It struck me as awfully
romantic. She grasped my hand in hers.

“How do,” I mumbled.

“Now, is that any way to greet your dearest
friend?” Her voice had a lilt to it, southern definitely, but
something foreign too. She squeezed my hand a little harder, her
little fingers pinching mine.

“That hurts. Stop it.” I tried to shake
loose, but she was like a barnacle I’d seen on a Tappy’s boat once.
Tappy took care of the rest of the yard for us. He wasn’t allowed
to touch the flowerbeds, but someone had to mow and weed and prune.
Mama could grow grass like nobody’s business too.

“Not until you do it right. My God, am I
going to have to teach you manners as well as how to bathe?”

She wrinkled her nose at me and I realized
how sweet she smelled. Just like Mama’s flowers. I was lost. I
looked her straight in those china blue eyes, my dull brown irises
meeting hers. I cleared my throat, but I didn’t smile.

“It’s nice to meet you as well.”

She dropped my hand then and laughed, a
tinkling, musical sound like wind chimes on a breezy afternoon. She
had me enthralled in a moment.

“Let’s go skip rocks in the river.”

“I’m not allowed. Mama says—”

“Oh, you’re one of those.” She dragged the
last word out, gave it an extra syllable and emphasis.

“One of what?” My hackles rose. Two minutes
and we were having our first fight. It should have been a warning.
Instead it made my blood boil.

She smiled coyly. “A Mama’s girl.”

Back then, I thought it was an insult. I
reached out to smack her one good, but she pranced away, closer to
the river with each skip.

“Mama’s girl, Mama’s girl.” She sing-songed
and danced and I followed, my chin set, incensed. Before I knew it,
we were in front on the river, a whole block away from Mama’s
house. I wasn’t allowed to go to the river. A boy drowned the
summer past, no one I really knew, but all the grown-ups decided it
wasn’t safe for us to play down there. This girl was new, she
wouldn’t know any better. But if I told her that we couldn’t be
here, she’d start that ridiculous chant again. I didn’t want to be
a Mama’s Girl anymore.

We skipped rocks until dinnertime. Mama
skinned my hide that night. She’d called and called for me to come
to dinner, had Tappy look for me. Carol Ann and I were too busy to
hear. We skipped rocks, whistled through pieces of grass turned
sideways between our thumbs, and dug for worms. I showed her how to
bait a line and she’d nearly fainted dead away when I put a warm,
wriggling worm in her hand. Tappy found us right after sunset, took
me home screaming over his shoulder. The joy I felt wouldn’t be
suffused by Mama’s switch. Never again. I had a friend, and her
name was Carol Ann.

It was the first of many concessions to her
whims.

***

“My Goodness, Lily, can’t you try to look
happy? You’re all sweet and clean, and we’ll have some ice cream
after, if you’re good. Alright?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled, sullen.

Mama had me spit shined and polished for a
funeral service at church. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to run off
to the river with Carol Ann, skip rocks, have a spitting contest,
something. Anything but go to church, sit in those hard pews and
listen to Preacher yell at the old folks who couldn’t sing loud
enough because their voices were caked with age and rot.

I didn’t think that was fair to them. I
remember my Granny vaguely, who smelled like our attic and had a
long hair poking out of her chin. She’d scoop me in her arms and
sing to me, her voice soft like the other old folks. I liked that,
liked to hear them whisper the words. It made the hymns seem
dangerous in a way. Like the old folks knew the dead would reach
out of their very graves and grab their hands, pull them down into
the earth with them if they sang loud enough to wake them.

Mama wasn’t hearing no for an answer today.
We walked the quarter mile to the Southern Baptist, greeted our
brothers and sisters, sat in the hard pews and celebrated the death
of Mrs. O’Leary. Preacher made sure we knew that we were sinners,
and I felt that vague guilt that I was alive and Mrs. O’Leary was
dead, though it was supposed to be glorious to have passed to the
better side.

We finished up and put Mrs. O’Leary in the
ground. I tried hard to hold my breath in the graveyard so no
spirits could inhabit me, but the graveside service took so long I
had to breathe. I took small sips of air through my nose, felt my
vision blacken. Mama pinched my upper arm so hard I gasped.

I gave up trying to hold my breath. All the
ghosts had been waiting, watching, patiently hovering, anticipating
the moment when I took in a full breath of air. They’re inside me
now; they inhabited my soul, tumultuous and gray. I tried to fight
them, until I couldn’t find any more reason to.

I begged to be allowed to go home, to be with
Carol Ann, but Mama kept a firm grip on my arm while I cried. Folks
thought I was grieving for Mrs. O’Leary. I was grieving for
myself.

Mama decided homemade ice cream was just as
good as the Dairy Dip, after all.

***

One day a massive storm came through. The
trunks of the trees were black with wet, the leaves in green
bas-relief to the long boned branches. Storms frightened me—the
ferocity of the winds, the booming thunder felt like it was tearing
apart my very skin, shattering my soul. Carol Ann and I had taken
refuge in my room. She rubbed my stomach, trying to calm me,
crooning under her breath. Nothing was working. I was shaking and
sweaty, low moans escaping my lips every once in a while. Carol Ann
was at a loss. She stood, leaving me on the floor, and went to the
window.

“Come away from there, Carol Ann.” My voice
sounded panicky, even to me. She turned and smiled.

“Don’t be a goose, Lily. What, do you think
the wind’s going to suck me right out that window?”

A flash of lightning lit up the room and the
thunder shook the house. I whimpered in response, my eyes begging
her to come back to me. She turned and stared out the window,
ignoring my pleas.

Then she whirled around, a wide smile on her
heart-shaped face. “I have an idea. Let’s be blood sisters.”

“Blood sisters? What’s that?”

“What? You’ve never been blood sisters with
anyone before, Lily? My goodness, where have you been hiding all
these years?”

“There’s no one to be sisters with, Carol
Ann. You know that.” I felt vaguely superior for a moment, but she
ended that.

“We need a knife.”

“Why?”

“My Lord in heaven, Lily, how do you think
we’re going to get at the blood?”

So I snuck out of my room, slunk down the
stairs, gripping each with my toes so the wind didn’t whisk me away
when it tore the roof off the house. The storm was loud enough that
Mama didn’t hear me go into the kitchen, get a knife from the rack
next to the stove, and make my way back up the stairs into my room.
Carol Ann’s eyes lit up when she saw the knife, the five-inch blade
sharpened to a razor’s edge.

“Give that to me.”

I did, a sense of wrongness making my hand
tremble. I think I knew deep in my heart that Mama wouldn’t want me
becoming blood sisters with anyone, no matter what the course of
action that led me there. But that was Carol Ann for you. She could
always convince me to see things her way.

Carol Ann took one of my sheer cotton
sweaters, a red one, and laid it over the lamp, so the light
fragmented like a lung’s pink froth and the room became like thin
blood. We sat in the middle of the floor, Indian-style, facing each
other. She made sure our legs were touching. I was scared.

“Okay. Stop fretting. This will only hurt for
a second, then it will be all over. You still want to be my blood
sister, right?”

I swallowed hard. Would this make us one? I
didn’t want that. No, I didn’t want that at all. A tiny corner of
my mind said, ‘Go find your Mama, let Carol Ann do this by
herself.’

“I think so,” I answered instead.

“You think? Now Lily, what did I say about
you thinking? That’s what I’m here for. I do the thinking for both
of us, and everything always turns out just fine. Now quit being
such a baby and give me your arm. Your right arm.”

I didn’t want Carol Ann to think I was a
baby. I held out my arm, which only shook for a second.

Carol Ann was mumbling something, an
incantation of sorts. Then she held up the knife and smiled. “With
this blade, I christen thee.” She ran the blade along the inside of
her right arm, bright red blood blooming in the furrows created in
her tender flesh. She smirked, a joyous glow lighting her
translucent skin, and took my arm. The point of the knife dug into
the crook of my elbow. “Say it,” she hissed.

“With this blade, I christen thee.” My voice
shook. She drew the knife along my arm and I almost fainted when I
saw the blood, dark red, much darker than Carol Ann’s. Then she
took my arm and her arm and held them together. We stood, attached,
and walked in a circle, eyes locked, blood spilling into each
other.