The Girls Are Missing (2 page)

“It’s a fairy palace,” her mother had exclaimed when they found it. Then she had been embarrassed. Just a touch of her Celtic grandmother, she told Gail.

“Granny really believed in them. I think it’s kind of nice. She was innocent. And sweet.”

The next day Gail had gone back to the cave-rock, not out of any belief in fairies, but because of the palace. She

had made people for it, and a garden of moss and white pebbles. Finally she shared the secret with her friend Anita Farand. Anita was the kind who might have laughed at her, but didn’t. She had joined in happily and made her own contribution to the garden.

Gail straightened the pebbles and removed a fallen leaf. She patted a loose piece of moss back into place. Some of the moss was green, some gray, and some had tiny red flowers. Embedded in a circle of white stones was the curved glass lid of a Mason jar. That was the garden pool. Its fountain was a miniature horse, borrowed by Anita from her sister’s collection of glass animals. A sprig of sumac, which they replaced daily, was supposed to be a palm tree. Yesterday’s tree drooped, but she had to leave it. She had forgotten to bring a new one. Other than that, the garden was fairly tidy now, and she turned her attention to the people.

The men were tiny forked twigs; the women, small straight sticks in wraparound leaf skirts. The queen wore a more permanent garment made from the lacy veins of a last year’s leaf.

She set to work, dressing them with special care for a party that was to be held that night on the roof of the palace. The silence of the forest walled her away from the rest of the world. She had almost forgotten it existed, when from somewhere near the foot of the hill came a nearly voiceless laugh.

Gail crouched over the stick figures, hiding them. The snicker came again. She raised her head.

“I know you’re there, Anita. I see you. “

Black hair, nearly invisible among the black rocks, moved behind a tree. Anita scrambled up the hillside. “I fooled you, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t,” Gail replied, although Anita had seen her try to cover the dolls.

“Yes, I did. You were scared.”

This was turning out to be one of the times when Gail did not like her. She almost wished she had kept the cave-rock to herself, but Anita was always coming to her house, or calling her on the telephone, and Gail had been hard pressed to explain her long absences.

“Look what I brought.” Anita uncurled her hand. In it lay a glass peacock, its tail spread wide and blazing with color, blue and green and touches of red, all somehow encased within the glass. “Another fountain.”

Gail did not know what to think. It certainly was magnificent.

“We don’t need two fountains,” she pointed out, feeling the cave-rock slip farther away from her.

Anita said nothing as she moved the horse aside and squeezed the peacock in next to it.

“Where did you get it?” Gail asked.

“From Denise.”

“Did she give it to you?”

Defiantly Anita tossed her long hair. “She always lets me play with her animals.”

Gail knew it wasn’t true. Anita’s sister jealously guarded her collection. Probably Anita had helped herself to the horse, too. And last spring, after one of her visits, a golden cape with a feathered collar had been missing from Gail’s doll wardrobe.

Anita seemed to sense her disapproval. She busied herself with the peacock and the horse, trying to make them both fit into the jar lid. She was not ashamed, Gail knew, but only aware of how Gail felt and waiting for it to blow over.

Finally she abandoned the animals, and asked brightly, “Gail, do you want to know what I saw?”

“What?”

“Over there. On the path.”

“What is it?”

“You have to come and see.” Anita stood up and brushed off her shorts.

Gail followed her down the side of the hill and along the path to a longer, lower hill with a rocky face.

“There.” Anita pointed to a crevice among the rocks. It was filled with dry leaves, sticks, and twigs, a mound that overflowed the crevice as though someone had piled them in.

“It’s just some old leaves,” Gail said.

“There. Don’t you see? Come closer.” Anita took her hand. “Now look. Can’t you see them? All those flies?”

Yes, she saw them, swarms of flies hovering about the leaves, their green bodies glinting in the filtered sunshine.

“Ugh!” Anita stumbled backward. “Something
stinks,.”

At the same moment, Gail smelled it, too. She clamped her hands over her mouth and bolted back to the path.

Anita coughed and gasped, flapped her arms and spun around. “Wow,” she said, backing against a tree. “I’m never going near there again.”

Gail uncovered her mouth. “Me either.”

“Maybe it’s shit. Maybe somebody shitted up there.”

“No, it smelled like something rotten in the refrigerator.”

“I didn’t even smell it before, I just saw the flies. I thought it was a fly nest. Gail, let’s not tell anybody, okay?”

Gail did not know why they shouldn’t, but in a way it seemed right. It was sort of a secret thing, there under the leaves. Something, or someone, had carefully covered it, and they were not supposed to find it.

But the cave-rock was gone. She would never be able to go back to the cave-rock, knowing that thing was there. She would have no place to escape to after Mary Ellen came.

“I don’t like it.” She kicked at a tree trunk. “I wish it wasn’t there.”

“Well, it is. What do you want to do now, Gail?” “I think—” Gail looked at the ground, avoiding the hill where the flies were. “I think I’d better go home now.”

“Me, too,” Anita decided. “I’m going to your house. And I’m going to stay for a while, and then I’ll walk around home by the road.”

3
 

Joyce woke from her nap as voices sounded on the stairs. She recognized Anita’s. It was good that Gail had someone to play with during the summer.

Rousing herself, she assembled a load of laundry. On her way to the basement she stopped and looked into the sun-porch, where they were playing. Dolls and doll clothes littered the floor. Anita did not notice her, but Gail glanced up with a faint smile.

They really were different, those two. Gail, always thin, still had the matchstick legs and wispy blondness of a child, while Anita, without seeming older, gave an unconscious hint of womanhood to come. It showed in her mannerisms, some probably spontaneous, some acquired, such as the habit of flinging back her hair and then preening it with a long, slow stroke of the hand.

It showed in her easy way of handling adults, and it showed, rather surprisingly, in her legs. From the red shorts to the sockless sneakers, they were long, tanned, and shapely.

Upstairs, Adam woke and demanded to be fed. She sat on her bed to nurse him and paged through a magazine with her free hand.

“How to Cope With Your Child’s Fears.” It was an article she ought to read sometime. Gail had had some terrible

fears after her father’s death. Most were gone now, but a few remained. Her questions about those missing girls, for instance.

Gradually Adam dozed off. She returned him to his crib and went downstairs to start dinner.

Anita was seated at the kitchen table, whining into the telephone. “Why can’t you come and get me?… Then will you tell Daddy to pick me up? . .. No, I don’t want to, I’m scared of Mr. Lattimer. … So much for you, I’ll stay here all night.”

Joyce unwrapped a freshly thawed beef fillet and began to slice it. “Why are you scared of Mr. Lattimer?”

“Because he’s a pervert and he’s ugly. And besides,” Anita tossed back her hair, “he’s in love with me.” She flounced away, immensely pleased with herself.

Joyce was shocked. What if he really had made advances to the girls?

Moments later came the sound of Gail’s voice. “No, I know what you’ll do. You’ll make me walk you all the way, and then I’ll have to come home by myself.”

“So much for you!” Anita burst back into the kitchen. With a sly smile at Joyce, she called over her shoulder, “I guess you’re not my friend anymore.”

Gail crept into the kitchen and stood close to her mother.

Anita slammed out through the back door. “Good-bye, Mrs. Gilwood. Your daughter’s mean and selfish.”

“Good-bye, Anita.” Joyce watched the black hair swinging down the driveway. “Now what’s the matter with her?”

“I don’t know.” Gail stared at the floor.

“I heard her asking for a ride home. Did she hurt herself?”

“No … Mommy, what does it mean when there are a lot of flies around something?”

“It means something’s spoiling, I guess. You know how flies are attracted to garbage.”

Of course Gail knew. What a silly question.

“What’s the matter, Gail? Where did you see these flies?”

“In the woods.”

“It might be a dead animal. A rabbit, or a deer.” There were occasionally wild deer, even in Cedarville.

“I couldn’t see it. It was covered with leaves.”

Mixing her teriyaki sauce, Joyce thought vaguely of dead animals, of how rarely one saw a dead wild animal.

Perhaps Mr. Lattimer had died. But how would he have gotten covered with leaves?

And then she realized that nothing could have gotten covered with leaves unless it had died last autumn before the leaves fell, and by now it would be well beyond the stage of attracting flies.

“Where in the woods?”

Gail said, “You know that place we found when we took a walk, and you said it was a fairy palace?”

“That’s what my grandmother would have called it. You mean it was
there
, in my grandmother’s fairy palace?”

“No, the next hill. It was in some rocks, in a crack in the rocks. There was just a pile of leaves and all the flies. And it smelled bad. It made me sick.”

“I should think so, when it’s this hot.”

Maybe a dead dog. Maybe someone buried a dog, but didn’t really bury it, with a shovel It’s very rocky there.

“Mommy, will you come and see it?”

“No, honey, I can’t go out and leave Adam. Why do you want me to see it?”

“Because maybe—” Gail ground her toe into the floor, then fled the kitchen.

Joyce peeled and sliced two cucumbers to marinate in sweetened vinegar. A real Japanese dinner.

The telephone rang. It was Sheila Farand, wondering if her daughter had started home.

“She left a while ago,” Joyce said, “by the road. There was something in the woods that bothered them. Gail was just telling me about it.”

“What sort of something? Don’t tell me that Lattimer’s been pestering them again.”

Then it was true, what Anita had said about Mr. Lattimer. Or was it simply that Sheila believed her daughter’s tales?

“No, it was something in the rocks. They said it was covered with leaves, and had a lot of flies around it, and it smelled bad.”

“Did they see what it was?”

“No. Probably a dead animal. Or maybe Mr. Lattimer’s been dumping garbage.” She grasped the phone with her shoulder and grated a sprinkle of fresh ginger over the cucumber.

“Probably,” Sheila agreed. “Okay, thanks, Joyce.”

Gail came back into the kitchen. “Who was that on the phone?”

“Anita’s mother. What were you starting to tell me?”

“Nothing.”

“It was about that thing you saw in the woods. Just tell me why it bothers you so much.”

“I’m afraid of it.”

She could pretty well guess what Gail thought it was, her phobias being what they were. But there must have been something she noticed, perhaps even subliminally, that made this seem beyond the realm of normal experience.

Joyce looked at the clock. In forty-five minutes, Carl would be home. She could not broil the teriyaki until he arrived. There was rice to cook, but Gail could mind that as well as Adam. She must do this for Gail, to help her exorcise those ghosts of fear. To let her know that she still mattered.

“Okay, where is it?” She could not help a little sigh of annoyance, despite her good intentions.

“Are you going?” Gail’s look of gratitude made it almost worthwhile.

Joyce received instructions as to where to find the “thing,” and Gail on when to cover the rice.

“Come back soon,” Gail called as she left, and Joyce wondered if she was right in leaving her and Adam alone for even half an hour.

But she had promised. Resolutely she stepped through the stone wall into the bright, hot meadow. Far in the distance she could see the roof of Mr. Lattimer’s shack. Would he have gone all that way to dump his garbage? Not likely. He kept very much to himself and that included his trash. Most of it he burned. The rest littered his own property but extended not an inch beyond.

She descended to the denseness of the brook and an army of mosquitoes. She had not been this way since April. It was almost eerily dark, with the trees in leaf and the sun past its zenith.

And then she was out in the woods. For a moment she could not remember where the fairy palace was. That first small hill. She climbed up to see it and was amazed at what Gail had done. A little garden with pebbles and moss and even a pool, all neatly arranged. What a creative child she had.

Love and admiration for Gail surged within her. She must get back to her quickly. Scrambling down the side of the hill, she continued along the path. And there, just as Gail had said, was another rocky hill.

She could not see any flies. Perhaps she was in the wrong place, or they had retired for the evening. The rocks seemed full of crevices. Some had trees growing out of them. Others were filled with moss, and leaves, and—

Yes, leaves. In one place the leaves and twigs were piled up to form a mound. She moved closer. And suddenly she was assaulted by all of it, the flies, the droning, the smell. She backed away, fighting waves of nausea.

After several deep breaths she tried again. Closer this time. She picked up a stick. For a moment she stood contemplating the leaves, then dropped the stick.

Still holding her breath, she hurried back along the path, across the brook and up into the sunny meadow, where she collapsed into the grass.

4
 

Gail greeted her with astonishment. “Did you go there already?”