Red Heather

by Aly Noble

  I nodded. “They investigated Estelle’s bathroom last night more thoroughly than they did the area where Carla’s body was.”

  Rose shook her head angrily. “Sick. They’re just handing out badges these days around here. We used to have a really great group of officers, but they slowly migrated to better areas.” Less haunted probably, I figured, absently scratching the back of my neck. Rose looked at me as I was retracting my hand. “How’s your head anyway?”

  “Still on straight, I hope,” I joked, and she smiled but the expression was a little strained. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. Just healing.”

  “Good,” she said, though she was a little surprised. “It’s seriously still healing?”

  I nodded. “Just where my hair got pulled out. The rest of it’s fine.”

  “That’s…,” she paused before saying what she was thinking, “…weird.”

  “It’s probably the least weird thing that's happened to me since I got here if we're being honest," I pointed out.

  That coaxed a short laugh from us both, and Rose looked like she was going to ask something else when her gaze averted to point just over my shoulder. When I heard a shuffle in the hallway behind me, I understood why. “Hey, Bethy,” she greeted the new arrival.

  “Hi,” came the drowsy reply and I turned to look at my second smallest neighbor, the strip of hair I’d dyed for her a couple weeks ago fading now. Bethaline was rubbing her fist against her eye and had made it to the end of the hall when she finally looked up and saw me. “Hi, Miri. What are you doing here?”

  I smiled. “I hurt myself again. Did you have a good sleep?”

  “You need to stop that,” she informed me with a yawn, disregarding my question.

  “I know,” I said, biting back a laugh. “I’ll be more careful.”

  “Mama, can I have a snack?”

  Rose glanced toward her daughter bemusedly. "You can have breakfast. You just woke up."

  “Can I have a snack for breakfast?”

  I smirked, and it pulled uncomfortably at my new stitches. Rose rolled her eyes and shook her head fondly as she got up. “Would you like some water?” she asked me.

  “Sure, thanks,” I said as she went into the kitchen. I looked at Bethaline as she settled into her newly acquired throne. “How’ve you been?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Your purple faded like mine.”

  I hadn’t really noticed until she mentioned it, but she was right. “It did, didn’t it,” I mused. “What color do you think I should do next?”

  She gave that a good amount of thought until she decided, “Blue.”

  “Blue’s a good choice,” I said. “I’ve had blue hair, but it’s been a long time. If teal is mermaid hair, then what’s blue hair?”

  “I think fairy hair,” she replied.

  “And purple hair?” I asked in turn.

  “Uh, witch hair.”

  “Witch hair?” I repeated, laughing as I did a “spell cast” wiggle of my fingers. “Good witch or bad witch?”

  She grinned. “Good witch!”

  “Oh, good. I was worried for a second,” I said, dropping my hands lightly to the tabletop. “Are you a good witch, too?”

  “Sometimes,” she said ambiguously.

  “When are you a bad witch?” I asked.

  “I haven’t been yet, but I might be,” she reasoned, picking at a knot in the wood on the table. By the looks of it, this wasn't the first time she’d dug her nail into it.

  “Well, I think you’re a good witch,” I told her with a shrug. “What makes you think you’re going to be a bad witch?”

  “My friend told me,” Bethaline divulged quietly.

  I frowned—she genuinely seemed a little upset about this. “Another kid said that?” I asked.

  “No,” she mumbled.

  What the hell, Jonah? “Jonah said that to you? That wasn’t very nice—or true.”

  She shook her head. “Jonah didn’t. My other friend did.”

  I felt a crease forming between my brows. “Your other friend? Who’s that?”

  “He lives with Jonah in your house,” she informed me. “Not all the time though.”

  Now I felt like I was going to throw up. “Is your friend a demon?” I asked warily in a whisper.

  Bethaline frowned. “What’s a demon?”

  Remember, you're talking to a six-year-old, I reminded myself. “Like a really mean ghost,” I said, hoping she’d understand that way. Then again, I probably didn’t know what a real demon was like—I was just assuming they were mean and that the entity that had bonded to Price was what history had deemed a “demon.”

  “He’s only mean sometimes,” she said. “Other times, he’s nice like Jonah.”

  “When did you talk to him?” I asked, my mouth tasting like numbing gel and bile.

  “When me and Axil came to play at your house.”

  “Beth, what kind of milk do you want?” Rose called from the kitchen.

  “Strawberry!” Bethaline replied immediately.

  “Strawberry, what?”

  “Please!”

  “Have you talked to him since then?” I asked.

  She looked at me and had to think for a second before she shook her head. “No. He said his name was Connor, but I don’t think that’s his real name.”

  “Bethaline, listen,” I murmured with as little urgency as I could manage. I didn’t want to scare her after all, just get my point across. I waited until she was looking at me to speak. “Connor’s a mean ghost, and I think he’d hurt you if he got mad. Don’t wander off without your mom.” I paused. “And, whatever you do, don’t go see Jonah at the house for a while. It’s not a safe place to go right now.”

  “Why not?” Bethaline asked. “Is Jonah okay?”

  “Jonah’s fine,” I said, but I flashed back to the gaunt look of his face from our last meeting. “Connor’s just staying at the house right now, and he’s not a good dude. I don’t want him to hurt you. Understand?”

  She nodded slowly, but seemed like she was trying to process what I was saying more deeply than her little kid brain reasonably could. Just then, Rose brought out a plate with two pre-cut waffles and set it in front of her daughter with a glass of pinkish milk accompanying. Once she handed over the silverware, Bethaline stabbed her fork into one of the small, syrupy chunks. My heroic neighbor returned after another few seconds with a glass of water for me before going to get Axil from the living room.

  I contemplated the child in front of me before asking carefully, “Hey, Bethaline?” She looked at me mid-bite. “You used to play by the river near my house, right?” Bethaline nodded. “What games would you play there again?”

  She finished chewing and then answered, “My Barbies would go swimming sometimes. And I’d play Treasure Hunt. I also threw a lot of rocks in the water.”

  Only one of those activities really interested me. “Treasure Hunt?” I repeated. She nodded. “I haven’t heard of that one. How do you play?”

  “I made it up,” she informed me. “You just look for all the treasures in the water and take them home.”

  “Did you ever find anything good?” I asked.

  She considered that with another bite of waffle. “Like what?”

  I sipped my water and swished it around my mouth before swallowing. “I was talking to Jonah, and he said he lost something around my house a long time ago,” I admitted. “You seem like you’re much better at finding things than I am, so I was hoping you maybe saw it.”

  “What did he lose?” Bethaline asked.

  Come to think of it, I really hoped she hadn't found what was basically a sickle (I assumed) in the creek and picked it up with her bare hands. “Uh, well, it’s like… It’s like a knife,” I explained vaguely, trying to give a visual with gestures, “but round. Like… Well, like the moon is sometimes. Or like the end of your fingernail.”

  She looked down at her hand and regarded the white part of her index fingernail, murmuring a quiet, �
�Oh,” for an answer.

  “Anything like that?” I prodded.

  She studied her hand for a few more seconds before shaking her head. “No. Nothing like that.”

  That deflated my spirits a bit. I wasn’t sure what he’d do once he had it back, but it might help the demon situation. Maybe the killer situation, too. I had too many goddamn situations. “Okay. Well, if you end up finding something like that—which you shouldn’t because you're not supposed to go up that way, at least not without your mom or me—don’t grab it with your bare hands or it’ll cut you. Got it?”

  “Got it,” she said around a mouthful of breakfast.

  “Cool.” I ran a hand through my hair and sat back. “So. Treasure Hunt, huh?” She nodded and I murmured, “You’d make a good pirate.”

  “Pirates are boys,” she pointed out.

  “Anyone can be a pirate,” I countered lightheartedly. “There have been a lot of great girl pirates.”

  “Really?” Bethaline asked, surprised.

  “Yep,” I confirmed. I glanced toward the clock and decided I ought to get going soon. It was easier though, not facing the real world. Or at least facing it with someone who didn't know the darkness of it just yet. Then again, I probably didn't give her enough credit. She'd seen a few things only a handful of people in the entire world had honestly seen and I needed to start being more mindful of that.

  Instead of any of those matters, I chose to ask her about something else. “What color is pirate hair?”

  “Blond like me because I’m a pirate,” she declared.

  I smiled. “Good answer.”

  “Hey, Miri?” I looked over to Rose, who was leaning in the doorway from the living room. “Can we keep talking in here?”

  “Sure,” I said and got up from the table. “See you in a minute, Captain,” I added to Bethaline.

  “Does the captain drive the boat?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah, most of the time.”

  Bethaline made a noise of disapproval. “You can be the captain.”

  “Why don’t you want to be the captain?”

  She looked at me like I was a complete moron. “I can’t drive.”

  I bit back a laugh. “Duly noted. First mate, then.” I went into the living room after that and sat down with Rose on the couch. “Bethaline doesn’t still go up to the river, does she?”

  “Not on my watch,” she murmured. “Her dad’s a little more lax about her roaming around the yard as long as she’s within yelling distance… She kept bringing rocks and stuff home and stashing them in her room on top of just wandering off…” She grimaced. “She’ll definitely be on lockdown now though. Your break-in incident has me seriously spooked.”

  “That’s probably best,” I said. “I don’t really know how it couldn’t. I doubt I’m going to be able to sleep again until all this is over.”

  Rose watched me closely. “Do you think it’s going to happen again?”

  My tongue autonomously ran over the stitched cut in my mouth. “I’m not sure it won’t. That’s enough to keep me up at night.”

  Chapter 24

  It felt ridiculous to be running an errand at a time like this. I was essentially being hunted by a not-quite-dead psychopath, but we were also out of milk and I had a desperate craving for popcorn. The day after the attack, the more immediate of the two threats won out and I ended up in the mart around noon, already mentally preparing myself for what was now a routine match of disapproving stares with the checkout lady.

  I clocked my shin on the bottom rack of my cart and swore, wondering why I’d grabbed a cart in the first place when I’d come in for two things. A big cart on a two-thing trip just invited all the shit I didn’t need—that was basically a written rule of the grocery store, even one as small as this. Case in point, I was already tossing an unnecessary pack of cookies in the basket before I got either of the two items I’d ventured out for.

  Weak, I chided myself before putting on my snack blinders and heading for the chip aisle.

  I wrinkled my nose at a bag of cheese-dusted tortilla chips—it was weird to crave stuff but not have much of an appetite. Between the two of us, Estelle and I barely hit the right levels of food intake or average hours for a good night’s sleep anymore. It couldn't have been healthy, and the problem was that there was currently no end in sight. That was what kept me up at night the most aside from being afraid of having a knife stuck in my mouth again or someplace else more vital.

  My phone vibrated, and I glanced down to see a text from Graham. That’s unusual—he must think I’m mad at him. The text read, "Checking in. Your mom called and asked if I’d talked to you. Avoiding calls now?"

  I rolled my eyes and opened his contact page to call him, glancing over the popcorn options once I got to the end of the aisle. Graham picked up on the second ring. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I replied, putting a bag of Chicago mix in the cart. “You’re texting now?”

  “Seemed easier,” he said. “At least at the moment. I’m picking up stuff for dinner later.”

  “Small world,” I commented, “although I’m grabbing snacks if we’re being honest.”

  “Are we being honest?”

  I shook my head at him. “You’re making me regret calling you.”

  “Partly why I texted you in the first place,” he said.

  So he's mad at me. Great. “Got it. I’ll take the hint next time.”

  “We can start calling each other again when whatever this is passes,” he said briskly. “I’m tired of it. I was being a jerkoff before, but now it’s you. I’m just waiting on you.”

  “You said some serious shit to me before, dude,” I mumbled.

  “And I apologized for that. It was shitty and unhelpful,” Graham said, but it felt like being brushed off. “That doesn't validate the way you've been acting."

  “You don’t know the half of what this has been like,” I snapped as I thoughtlessly tossed a box of buttered Orville into the cart. I glanced at the only other person in the aisle—a woman I’d seen around Jill’s every so often—and lowered my voice. “You don’t really ask, do you?”

  “Why should I? You’re not even honest with yourself,” he muttered tersely.

  “How the fuck would you know anyway?” I demanded through my teeth.

  “Because I’m your best friend,” he shot back.

  “Then act like it,” I said with finality and hung up immediately afterward. Why had I even bothered?

  I sighed and pressed the top of the phone against my forehead before putting it back in my purse. It lit up one more time with a passive-aggressive text to mirror the first: “Move somewhere warm. And get some help. There’s some BFF advice for you.”

  “Suck a dick,” I mumbled toward my bag, rage making my chest feel like it was stuffed with thumbtacks. I shoved my cart toward the end of the aisle, and I’d just stuck the nose of the basket past the end-cap when another cart clipped its side. The minor collision startled me, and my ire immediately deflated when I hastened to apologize. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying—”

  The other shopper came into view, and his baby blue eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled at me.

  My words died.

  “Attention?” Price finished for me, looking for all the world like a concerned and forgiving grocery-goer. “Don’t worry about it.”

  God, this felt like going crazy. He was so fucking convincing. It was no wonder he never really got caught. I glanced over as the woman from before passed us and smiled at Price. She looked at me briefly, but it was a look of confusion for my seemingly out-of-place behavior. I could hear my breath rasping through the ridges of my teeth.

  “You okay?” he asked, playing the part perfectly.

  “Great,” I snapped quietly and maneuvered my cart around his, almost hitting another passerby’s basket in the process and earning an aghast mumble as I headed for the milk fridges at the back of the store.

  As soon as I was well away from him,
I screwed my eyes shut and let my grip loosen on the handlebar of the cart. “Fuck,” I whispered softly, bowing my head as I tried to collect myself. This is never going to stop.

  It wasn’t just break-ins, it wasn’t just threats, it was this—the possibility of pure, unadulterated psychological torture in a public domain at any given hour on any given day. I had literally just bumped into my would-be murderer in the grocery store. A man who wasn't supposed to be alive, whose face was plastered across bits and pieces of the web, and who no one seemed to recognize. Probably because anyone who’d known about him or met him had written him off once they saw his obit.

  Well, all except one. I still had to deal with that at some point.

  I shivered and couldn’t decide if it was the fridge I was standing next to or a fear response—then again, I don’t know why I was trying to decide. It was almost always both and, even if it wasn’t, they were both factors anyway. I opened the door and grabbed a gallon of two-percent, glancing through the glass pane to see if Price was still lurking around.

  He was standing over the frozen center stock of meats, pretending to be scoping out something in the tub. Or maybe he really was—I supposed he was more human now than before. Theoretically, at least. Maybe he just wanted a burger.

  I grimaced at the milk jug still in my hand as the handle sweated pearls of condensation into my palm. I was nearing the point of hysteria. Maybe humor was coming more easily because we were in public and he couldn’t necessarily do anything but passively antagonize me. Coping mechanisms and all that. I shook my head and put the milk in the cart instead of continuing to psychoanalyze myself as that certainly wasn’t going to help things.

  As I leaned against the cart and encouraged it forward with my weight, I considered taking the long way around the aisle and opting out of directly passing Price. After surveying the area around us and confirming that there were enough people around, I just took the direct route toward the produce section across the way. Besides, I didn't feel like giving him the satisfaction of seeing me take a detour.