The Creeping (38 page)

“But what about Jane Doe?” Sam's eyes search mine.

There's an idea germinating in my head; it hasn't taken shape enough for me to explain it to Sam except to say, “Daniel sees Jeanie everywhere. He said crowds wear her face. He thinks Jeanie was there waiting for me to remember, waiting for him to get his. He hates her. He has Caleb believing it was the Creeping who took Jane Doe.”

Sam bites his lip, appraising my expression. “You don't think so,” he says.

I shake my head. “No, Sam. The timing is too much of a coincidence. Daniel hasn't been here in years, and when he finally comes back there's another body found? And it isn't just that. Daniel said
something. He said that Caleb thought the monster had taken a bite out of Jane Doe's scalp and put the rest back. We didn't tell him about the missing piece, did we?”

The corners of Sam's mouth tug downward. “No, but someone in the police department could have when he was questioned. Or Zoey might have told Caleb, and Caleb could have told Daniel.”

“I guess.” I shake my head. “But it was more the way Daniel said it. He was bragging and gloating over how gullible Caleb was. He even winked at me. He said, ‘I'm the monster.' ”

“But what about Betty Balco and the others?” Sam asks. He isn't skeptical, just thoughtful.

I struggle to lift my head from the pillow, and he moves his arm to prop it up. He flanks me on the gurney. “They were taken almost ninety years ago. The police know, Sam.
Shane knows.
There's no appetite or force or monster. Whoever did it is human and dead,” I say. I guide his face closer to mine. “Promise me. Swear to me that you won't go looking. That you'll stop believing in the Creeping or monsters or devils.” Yes, it feels dangerous to tempt fate by staring into the dark for too long. But also, I don't need another mystery eating away at my edges, making me more like Caleb and Griever.

“What about the Norse folklore?” Sam asks. His eyes glow; he's determined to solve the puzzle. “What if there was something other than a man nibbling on those kids? What if it's still here? Two of the girls who were taken decades ago visited Norse Rock. What if that's where it lives? Norse Rock could be named because that's where the original settlers camped. That can't be a coincidence, can it?”
There are no coincidences.
“Is it
a coincidence that all the victims are redheads—that even Jeanie was a redhead? That those early Norse settlers who were maimed were probably blond or redheaded?”

My heart hiccups at his determination. I can't bear watching him eroded by believing. “There's no way for us to know if there's any truth to the Norse lore,” I say, pressing closer to him. “We're not stalking through the woods in pursuit of a mythical monster. We're not six anymore with bows and arrows. We know better.” Better isn't really how I feel about knowing that people do monstrous things; that even those you love are capable of them; that monsters aren't half as scary as human evil. “It doesn't exist, Sam. It's only a story. When Griever was young, more people told it. Someone, a bad man or a few of them, knew the story—or a version of it—and he thought he could use the superstition and fear to take little girls and get away with it. He's dead. The victims' families are dead.”

The arm I'm on bows around me, and Sam shifts me closer to him. “You're saying the story was just a legend and someone used it as inspiration for their crimes?”

“Yes.” I nod into his chest. “Stories have their own kind of power.”

“Small towns are prone to panic,” Sam admits reluctantly. His free hand absentmindedly smooths my hair. “There weren't actually any witches in Salem, but it didn't stop them from burning women. Savage in the 1930s wasn't exactly seventeenth-century Salem, but Savage was more isolated than it is now, and people would have been more superstitious.”

“Exactly.” I pull a little away to meet his eyes. For Sam's sake, I
need to sound full of the conviction I want to feel more than I do. “Griever is what you become when you believe in what can't exist. This is over for us. Please. Promise that you'll stop looking too.”

Sam tilts his head, doubt skittering across his eyes, but he says, “I promise,” anyway.

Forty-five minutes after Dad's left, I convince Sam that I'll be fine alone until morning. He turns at the last moment on the threshold, propping the door open with his tennis shoe. He smiles and says something sweet—probably that he loves me—but I don't hear him. Because in that moment a family passes through the hallway. They're framed by the door for only a split second. The last to pass, a small girl lagging behind, cranes her neck for a better look at me. She scrunches up her freckled nose and smiles, revealing gaps from missing front teeth. As her mom ducks back to tow her away, her mop of red ringlets looks green in the fluorescent light. The door swings shut and she's gone, and I hear Daniel's voice on a loop in my head:
I see Jeanie everywhere.
I wonder if I will too?

I spend two days in the hospital. Hours spent staring at the yellowed, sagging ceiling tiles while Dad is at work and Sam is at BigBox. Hours of restless sleep where I awake sputtering for air and clawing at my pillow. Hours where I struggle with what Sam said. I know there is no ancient beast; I know who killed Jeanie and Mrs. Talcott. I think I know who killed Jane Doe. I know that Betty Balco's kidnapper must have been human; I know that he likely took the other missing girls and that he's dead, rotting in the ground.

The knowing doesn't stop the wondering. Not only because it's
more painful to accept the very human appetites haunting Savage. It is. Also, there's a restlessness in my blood, making my veins itchy. I can't shake that elated and wild grin I wore in the Polaroid any more than I can shake Jeanie's bleak stare. I can't stop wondering if I was braver and more alive before Jeanie vanished and if losing her snuffed something out in me.

But mostly, I'm restless because deep down at my roots, I fear what Sam does. How do you disprove an ancient evil lurking in the woods? Even if we search Norse Rock, we can't search every dark nook and cranny of the forest. We can't traverse every narrow passage way in the undergrowth. We can't explore every mine shaft and every cave and every aerie in every treetop. How do we know that the Creeping isn't there, suckling on a little girl's finger bone?

I
sit swinging my legs along the side of my hospital gurney. Strike that. Not
my
hospital gurney anymore, since I'm waiting for Dad to pick me up and bring me home. The leg swinging makes me look upbeat and less like a traumatized schizo than cowering under the bed would, and if I'm going to get out of here, I can't look like I'm twitchy with PTSD. Trust me, inside I am.

Zoey went home yesterday. Before Caleb showed up at Cole's party, Zoey did a keg stand. After he arrived, she tried to drown her suspicion in Jell-O shots. Zoey knew Caleb was hiding something. It's why she bailed on Sam and me the night before. She waited all evening for him to leave the house. And when he finally did, she went through his drawers and came up with a strange black candle and a hunting knife he hadn't cleaned. Right there, barefoot in the middle of Caleb's childhood room, Zoey realized her brother had taken the head off the cat in the cemetery. As children Caleb and Daniel had seen Griever sacrifice a dog. It was the event that made
them want to offer a smear of blood to stave off the monster.

Eleven years later, with the decapitated tabby cat in the cemetery, Caleb was still trying to give the monster its sacrifice. Sam was right: It wasn't Griever.

Zoey waited to confront Caleb, but he never came home. The next day she texted him about Cole's party; she told him Cole was asking about him, and he took the bait. After he arrived, Zoey dragged Caleb outside to confront him. She probably could have handled herself with only Caleb, but he had called for backup once he realized that she wasn't going to quit. Zoey said she didn't feel afraid until the moment Caleb's knuckles crunched against her face. When his fist came away, she saw how Daniel was looking at her, like he was going to finish the job.

For two days I've tried not to picture Zoey flailing through the woods, alcohol poisoning setting in, running for her life from her brother. I asked her why she didn't tell me about Caleb. She said she couldn't say what she was thinking about her brother out loud until she spoke with Caleb about it, until she knew for sure. I get that.

I was supposed to be released with her, but the skin around my stitches was swollen. They kept me another day to be sure the gash wasn't infected. I close my eyes and rub my temples. No infection, but I do have a bulldozing headache. Daniel's face flashes across the inside of my eyelids.
I see Jeanie everywhere.
So do I.

“You sleepwalking?” Shane interrupts my nightmare train of thought.

My eyelids snap open. His clothes are rumpled, and the lavender
bulges under his eyes rival my own. “Yeah right, as if I sleep anymore.”

His mouth sets in a bleak line. “Your dad said I could pick you up.”

I shrug and jump off the bed, my sneakers slapping the tile floor and my head spinning.

“Should I call a nurse?” Shane grabs my elbow as I teeter.

“No, the painkillers make the room spin,” I explain hastily. I want out of here.

Two minutes later Shane's holding the passenger-side door of his car open for me and placing my small overnight bag, stuffed with the few items Dad brought to the hospital, at my feet. I manage to buckle the seat belt across my chest without yelping. Shane's cleared away all the fast-food wrappers from the floor, but the upholstery still reeks of cigarettes, and there's a new coffee ring on the dash that shines sticky and fresh.

“So you and that Worth kid are a real item now?” Shane asks, steering out of the almost empty parking lot. A droplet of sweat runs from his hairline down his temple. I crack the window to let the June breeze in.

“We have ten minutes before my house and you want to waste it on who I'm dating?” I raise a quizzical eyebrow.

“No, I'm stalling.” He looks at me for a long second, trying to determine my condition. Am I too broken to tell the truth to? I wave impatiently for him to continue. “We found Caleb.”

“What?” I strain against my seat belt.

Shane keeps his gaze on the road. “A fisherman spotted tracks along Blackdog River early this morning. He followed them and
found Caleb huddled in the hollow trunk of a fallen tree. Hadn't had water or a thing to eat for two days.”

I sit up straighter. “What did he say?”

“He hadn't had any water or food while he was out there,” Shane parrots himself.

I knock on the dashboard. “Yeah, hello, I heard you the first time.
What did he say?
”

“It's more complicated than that. He can answer our questions, sure, but he's . . . unwell.”

I can tell by his reluctance that he doesn't want to continue. “Whatever it is, I can handle it, Shane.”

He takes a deep breath. “He's painted a detailed picture of his involvement with Daniel. He reached out to Daniel on his way back to Savage. He only came back because he saw the coverage about Jane Doe. Daniel told him shortly after he arrived that he killed his mother to keep her quiet. Caleb made no effort to tell the police. He and Daniel conspired to frighten you off trying to remember Jeanie's death. He confessed to having Officer Reedy, who we've learned is a previous acquaintance of Caleb's, help by distracting his partner from watching your house when Caleb left the strawberries on your porch. Apparently, he knew Caleb and Daniel were on their way, and he insisted on a coffee break.”

I drop back into the seat, wincing at the sting in my shoulder. Daniel and Caleb were pulling the strings all along. They left the lifeless strawberries on my porch. Caleb could have used one of Zoey's many misplaced keys to let himself into my house; Caleb and
Daniel rearranged the photos. Caleb threatened to tell my dad and the cops if I continued pursuing Jeanie's killer. They were trying to scare me off the investigation. Now that I really think about it, the only time Daniel cooperated with me was to bring me to Griever's. Daniel believed Griever had Jeanie's body; he hoped she'd implicate herself. He didn't know she'd tell us about the others or send us after monsters.

“Reedy's claiming he was blackmailed. Caleb has some incriminating pictures of him smoking marijuana at a party. Daniel learned about them and seized the opportunity,” Shane rumbles on. “There's something else,” he warns, sizing me up again out of the corner of his eye. “Under the stress of recent events and confronting you and Zoey, he's showing signs of a psychosis. It's situational, meaning that he's capable of having lucid conversations on some topics, but when discussing others, he's delusional. He's talked a lot about a monster. He doesn't have a name for it like you do. He said the monster chased them through the woods when they left you at the lake. It attacked Daniel.”

I slump back. That's what happens to those who believe in what couldn't possibly exist. Caleb rocking and ranting. Caleb crying that it was the monster setting them up. He was always more fragile than Zoey. Daniel let him believe that Jane Doe was proof that it existed. Daniel called me a loose end; Caleb was one too. I don't want to give Daniel too much credit, but I think he was handling Caleb. As long as Caleb lamented a beast, no one would believe him if he confessed about Jeanie. Manipulating Caleb was Daniel's fail-safe.

“Stella,” Shane says gently. “We found Daniel about a half mile up the river in a ravine. He'd been dead for a day. Impaled by a branch. The techs who recovered the body found hair and blood on it. They believe it'll confirm that Caleb killed him.”