The May Queen Murders (16 page)

here.”

Someone who used to be here and never quite belonged, accord-

ing to the stories.

Violet brought the lip of the bottle to her mouth. When she spoke

again, a sloshiness mushed her voice. “What’d he look like?”

I peeled away from the trellis, staying by the riverside. The water

was reddish, as if bloody and poisoned. Violet handed me the bottle.

The sound of wine lolling around the glass curves was tempting, and

I drank the thick, berry liquid.

“That bad, huh?” she asked.

“Th-that bad,” I answered.

My mouth sour from wine and bonfire smoke, I slumped on

the steep peak of the bank, too aware of the celebration. Families

roasted chickens, their skin crackling while the herbs rubbed over

them burned with an odor like Mamie’s medicinal pastes. Our ances-

tors built fires where they danced, leaped over the flames, and used

smoke to send up prayers for a good harvest, prayers for protection

of land, animals, and folks.

Mamie and her stories.

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I wished I knew the endings.

Violet wobbled. “Dahlia didn’t come. She used to be like Heather,

you know, outspoken and brave. It was taken from her.”

“Heather don’t wanna be told to be careful,” I said.

“You girls’ll be in trouble if anyone catches you down here.”

I caught myself from losing my balance as I contorted to see Jas-

per Denial and two others from his side of the Glen. The girl was

Star, and the boy was named Elm. I didn’t share classes with them,

and they took the same route to school as Jasper. As such, I didn’t

know them as well as others.

“Look what I got!” Jasper said as he showed off a crate filled with

a half dozen bottles of wine.

Violet poked him in the shoulder. “What’d you do? Sneak ’round

and grab bottles from under folks’ tables? All I had to do was hit my

family’s barn and the fermentin’ barrels. We got loads of Crenshaw

claret, and I didn’t make myself into a thief, young Jasper Denial.”

She grabbed one of Jasper’s stash, tossing it to me. I coiled my

hand around the bottleneck. It felt so strange to be among a group

that wasn’t Heather, Rook, and — often enough — August. I looked

between them to find Rook, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Y’all lookin’ for the madman in the woods?” Star asked, holding

her lantern below her chin to cast eerie shadows across her face.

Elm laughed and elbowed her. “Anybody who says they seen him’s

a liar.”

“You dummy,” Violet said, tipping her head toward me. “Consider

your company.”

I jumped as Star’s fingers glided over my shoulder. She stood over

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me, silhouetted by her gauzy dress and silver-blond hair. Her eyes

were dark and sunken, wary as she looked me over. “He’s comin’ for

you, Ivy.”

I clambered to my feet and snatched up my wine with a growl.

“Bitch.”

I left. They laughed behind me, and despite hearing Violet scold

them, I wove a path along the river. To get away. Clear my head.

Every few steps brought my lips to the bottle. I walked and drank.

Walked and drank. Blinking. Drinking. Swimming in my thoughts

but not feeling.

Don’t go out after dusk.
The sky was at dusk.

Don’t let yourself be alone.
I was alone.

I wheeled around to see how far I’d gone from the May Day cel-

ebration. The bonfire leached into the sky behind me, an amber eye

against the darkening horizon. Metal clinking against itself —
chink,

chink, chink
— caught my ear. I whipped back around and faced

Promise Bridge. The wood planks bobbed up and down. Someone

had crossed it. Someone I didn’t see.

My mouth went dry, and I backed away a step.
Go back. Find the

others.

Someone else found me first. Violet panted as she caught up to me

and pressed her clammy palm to my wrist. “Ivy, I’m sorry.”

The others were with her, sullen-faced in their lantern light. Jas-

per nodded. “Just takin’ the piss outta you. No harm, right?”

I didn’t answer. Promise Bridge’s suspension rocked back and

forth, enough that Elm noticed it.

“You messin’ ’round on the bridge?” he asked.

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“Not me,” I answered.

Elm and Star started toward Promise Bridge, and Jasper trailed

after them, which left Violet and me on the riverbank. She called,

“Where are ya goin’?”

“To find Birch Markle!” Star replied. “That’s what Ivy wants us to

believe she saw, right? So let’s get him!”

The lanterns Elm and Star carried were ghost lights glowing

across the bridge, and from within the woods, more strange cal s

echoed on the wind. Violet clutched my hand as we stumbled after

the others. They’d picked up their speed, running now, wild as they

hunted a monster. The bridge rattled beneath my feet, and I clutched

the chains to steady my spinning head. No matter how fast or slow

I moved, a sensation built inside my skull like I might pitch into the

water below.

Violet let go of my hand. “We gotta hurry or we’ll lose them. We

can’t be caught in the woods by ourselves.”

I grabbed the post at the bridge’s end. My mouth, dry not minutes

before, was now tangy. “I’m gonna be sick.”

Violet hedged as the lights veered to the woods. “C’mon, Ivy. You

gotta keep movin’. We can’t lose them.”

I pul ed myself up from hunching over with my hands on my knees

and sweat above my lips. I shouldn’t have drunk so much. The oth-

ers stil carried wine along with their lanterns, and their laughter re-

sounded from within the woods. Violet linked her arm with mine to

hurry me along. The nausea let up after a bit, and I trudged down the

path where Potter’s Field spread out under the wasted light of dusk.

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No one wanted this land, Ivy girl,
Mamie once said.
The unknowns

return to dust in this here place. Tuberculosis and influenza patients,

prisoners rottin’ away in cel s. Folks who died alone with no one wil ing

to claim their remains. Folks put ’em in pine boxes with only crossed

arms and corpse money on their dead eyes. But the hil men bought

the land cheap, coaxed crops to grow from the clean side of the river

there, and pretended it was better than the rest of the land. There ain’t

any doin’ away with that boneyard. We don’t speak of it, but everyone

’
round here knows we’re the undertakers of the unclaimed.

During daylight, the graveyard inspired a hollow sobriety. But at

latest dusk, the feeling of Potter’s Field was of tremendous loss, not of

life because all things died, but rather the people of whom not even

a memory remained.

“Violet, where are you?” Star called.

“We’re comin’!” she replied so loud and close that my ear ached.

Her step quickened, and I had to keep up or risk being alone in the

woods.

“Someone’s here!” Elm yelled.

We veered toward his shout. Crispy leaves blanketed the ground,

and Violet and I ran together deep into the woods, a place where

there was no trail. Running, running. We trusted the dim glow of

lanterns ahead until we caught up. There, standing amid tree trunks

and scrubby bushes, the others stared out from dark eyes and pasty

faces. They weren’t laughing now. The boys, who carried knives

when working out in fields, had them drawn. Star raised her lantern,

and her voice trembled. “We found him.”

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In the middle of the cluster was a tall shape in hooded rags with

arms surrendered to the sky.

“Oh, my God.” Violet broke away from me and drew closer to

Jasper.

I crept along the clearing, using the bordering trees for support.

My head rolled back to look above where the canopy of branches and

leaves was strung with fabric, a web of paisleys and plaids, velvet and

burlap, all knotted together. Skirts of Glen girls, remnant pieces from

clothing loomed across the branches, haunting to see. Twine coiled

around pieces of metal — spoons, gardening tools, knives — and tied

around the webs to clink together.

It was a collection.

My eyes parched as if I’d stared too long at a fire. There was so

much to see. Someone had made this place into a curious home. This

was the place Sheriff and his men had found, the place where they’d

set up a stakeout and never found another sign of Birch. Maybe he

had other homes deeper in the woods, and God only knew what he

kept there. But he was here now.

“Monster!” Star shrieked and pointed.

The shape was tal , taller than anyone else in the cluster, but he

was also slender, with long, knobby digits for fingers and hanks of

dirty hair creeping from his hood.

Birch Markle, the madman in the woods.

Jasper narrowed his eyes and flexed his grip on his knife. “Don’t

run, or when we catch you, we’ll slit you in half.”

Yet Birch bolted through the woods. Violet whipped back around

to grab me while I struggled to hold my footing against the tidal

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wave of long hair and skirt and shouts of “Monster!” from her and

the others.

“Vi,” I hollered over the yel s, “st-stop! This is insanity!”

“He’s the mad one, not us,” she said. “We’ll catch him, cut him up

to feed the pigs, and no one’ll be afraid again.”

There was murder in Violet’s voice, a swept-upness. This chaos

had to stop, but I was in a group I didn’t trust. No Rook, no August,

no one with any sense. Chasing him down and whatever else they

had planned wouldn’t change what he’d done.

I yanked my arm from Violet’s hold and charged back the way I

prayed I’d come into the forest. I was in so far I wasn’t sure I’d know

my way out during full day, let alone half night. My vision was hazy,

my steps sloppy. I ran faster, then crashed against someone barrel-

ing along the path. My backside thumped the earth, and I lay mo-

tionless, everything around me spinning so I was uncertain of down

from up.

“Ivy?”

Rook. He was close, but I couldn’t find him to focus.

His skin was rough as he took my wrist. He held a lantern. “I was

by the riverside and heard noise.”

“They’re chasing him,” I said.

“Who?”

“Birch Markle. They found him in the woods!”

Rook yanked me to my feet. “Show me where.”

My arm waved in the direction from where I’d come. The move-

ment left me hanging on his vest, hoping not to fal .

“You’re drunk. You should go home.”

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“Not until we stop them,” I said. “Come, quick!”

With a growl, Rook dragged me down the path. The swell of dead

leaves rolled with the wind. The
ting-ting-ting
of broken glass wind

chimes and old spoons swaying above broke the silence. Ahead,

there was a glow.

“There,” I told Rook. “Follow that light.”

Birch Markle could’ve killed me in Potter’s Field. He didn’t. The

others could kill him now, but I wanted him to atone for what he’d

done. He couldn’t be punished if dead.

The others’ lanterns grew brighter until we reached a gap in the

trees where a body lay on the ground, a rock near his side. His arms

were wrapped around his head as if he tried to block a hit. Near the

front of the cluster, Violet scrambled forth to pick up a stone.

“Stop!” Rook ordered.

Violet glared at him before her arm arced back. The stone sailed

the distance to thud against the cloaked shape’s hip. Jasper held his

knife. Elm and Star threw what they could — rocks, empty wine bot-

tles, sticks. Maybe because of the dark, maybe because they’d been

drinking, the majority of blows missed their target.

Birch lay still on the ground.

“You can’t kill him,” Rook shouted.

“The hell we can’t,” Jasper replied. “Comin’ in the Glen, killin’

those animals, attackin’ Ivy. We ain’t afraid no more. And where were

you? Some sheriff you’ll make someday.”

Rook shoved Jasper. “Fuck you!”

The throwing slowed as Rook put himself between the others and

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Birch. My skin was too tight as I stared at the hand with knuckles

scraped raw that crept out from the cloak. Rook wound his fingers

into the hood covering Birch’s head and yanked it back to reveal

dirty blond hair stained with blood.

Milo.

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