“Better watch out,” one of the soccer players said. “If her grandfather’s killing these girls she may know where he is.”
Everybody laughed and Kat bit her tongue to contain a smart-ass remark. She slipped around the circle and seated herself on the ground beside Carrie Ann. Raphael, a jock with a cocky attitude took a toke of the joint and passed it to Carrie Ann. She inhaled a long drag, then handed it to Kat.
But Kat passed it along to a girl named Bebe Butterworth on her left.
“Graveyard girl too stuck up to take a hit?” Woody said with a snide look.
Kat gave him a sour smile. “It’s not my thing,” she said although Carrie Ann nudged her as if to say she should just go along.
Maybe this was a mistake.
“Tell us about your murdering grandfather,” Bebe said.
“Never met the man.”
“Did your mom know he was a psychopath?” Raphael asked.
Anger sent Kat up from her seat on the ground and sympathy for her mother followed. Why had Mama stayed around this Podunk town and put up with this shit her whole life?
She didn’t intend to. She’d hightail it out of Brambletown as soon as her diploma was in hand.
Frustrated because she wanted to tell Carrie Ann about the journal entry and convince her to help search for that grave, she decided to challenge the group.
“You talk like a big guy,” she said, addressing Woody. “If that girl Ruth was buried out here fifteen years ago, prove how brave you are and help me look for it.”
NINETY-NINE
No Man’s Land
That little black skirt and those red cowboy boots were his undoing. Still, he hid in the shadows of some pines that stood so closely together they looked entwined like one giant tree.
The voices screamed inside his head, over and over, calling her vile names and ordering him to get rid of her. Sometimes he tried to silence the voices but the more he protested the louder they shouted, dominating his mind and sometimes blurring his vision until he obeyed and did what they said.
Another voice from his childhood taunted him.
You’re worthless. Evil.
He covered his ears with his hands. Shut up, shut up, shut up.
Sweat dribbled down the back of his neck into his shirt. His breathing quickened.Hershrill laughter pierced his eardrums. He had to makehershut up.
She’s gone now. In the past. She can’t hurt you anymore. Focus on the present.
He peered at the group of teens, silently laughing at their stupidity. That girl Carrie Ann though… he couldn’t take his eyes off her. His rational side insisted he stay away from her.
But she’d been sneaking out of her house to meet her friends so they could party in the woods a lot. Another girl he didn’t know and two boys, who looked like jocks but talked like druggies, were passing a joint around. Carrie Ann’s best friend Kat was with her, too.
Earlier, the teens snapped photos for their Instagram posts in front of the little white church that had once seemed quaint and charming but now stood rotting and empty, the interior so hollow only the sounds of lost voices singing old time gospel tunes echoed from the eaves.
The parched, dry land had been deserted for years, and the burial ground held more bodies than anyone knew about. That fact gave him secret pleasure.
A smile curved his mouth as he remembered the first girl he’d buried here. That had been sweet. Personal. Watching her gasp for her last breath and claw at his hands to release her had brought a calm to the gnawing craving for murder that possessed him. That calm had lingered for a while but just like the underground fire, it had a life of its own.
The beast needed feeding. And the little blond with those red cowboy boots would be his late-night dinner.
He listened for sounds of wildlife but as usual, it was quiet. Just like the trees and grass, the wild animals couldn’t survive on the toxic land.
As if that was something to celebrate, some fool had erected that dumbass memorial for the dead who’d lost their lives in the coal mountain fire years ago.
