“Are you threatening me?” I’m so damn tired of being in the passenger’s seat. If Heather Evans thinks I have an ounce left in me to put up with her brand of psychotic bullshit, she has another thing coming. As far as I know, I am in a waking nightmare that for the life of me I can’t rouse myself from, and last time I checked it’s not a homicide to slaughter someone within your dreams. That is exactly what I used to fantasize about back in high school. Some girls dreamed of their wedding day, a white picket fence, two point five children, and I dreamed of hacking Heather to bits with the rusty butcher knife my father kept in the shed. My sister beat me to it—wrong person, though.
“Take it how you want to, Ally.” Her eyes spear their deadness into mine. “I’m not leaving until we find your little girl. And the only way we’re going to find her is if you tell the truth—just like you had me tell the truth that day. Remember?” Her voice pitches, candy coated with insanity.
“Yes.” I swallow hard. “I remember.”
* * *
By Friday, I’m worn thin with text messages from my least favorite nuisance. I’ve relegated Heather to a hotel room and happily confined she’s been ever since. For now, the electronic communication and just breathing the same air, as she puts it, is enough to satisfy her. She claims to understand that my husband and I need some time to ourselves. But I know her too well. I have a ticking time bomb sitting at the edge of town just waiting to blow up in my face.
McCafferty shows up again, and like some over animated character in a silent movie, she asks us to follow her down to the woods at the end of the street as a coven of reporters lurk in the distance. It’s the first icy day we’ve had here and the fog rolls out in billows down the street like batting unfurling off the bolt. Tomorrow night is Halloween, a treasured and well-loved holiday to Reagan, and it sickens me that she’s not here to bask in the glory. It sickens me she’s not here to begin with.
“What are we doing?” I pant, trying to keep up with her brisk pace.
James picks up my hand and gives a warm squeeze. “Is there new evidence?”
New evidence is an oxymoron at the moment, considering there hasn’t been any evidence at all.
“Just something I thought the two of you might be interested in.”
We set foot into the woods as our feet crunch over the brittle pine needles that have shed to create a mattress over the soil.
“Before this land was a development, there used to be farmhouses here.” She gives a hard sniff as if pausing to take in the fresh pine scent. It smells like rot and death to me, and I pray to God that has nothing to do with Reagan.
James scoffs. “If you say the words Indian burial ground—”
My stomach lurches when he says the words Indian burial ground—more to the point, Indian.
“Not that.” She walks deeper into the woods before turning to face us. “There was once a house here.”
A chill runs up my spine because already I don’t like where this is going.
“Turn of the twentieth century these were all dairy farms.” She frowns at the development sitting behind us, a testament to modern day architecture, greedy contractors, and overbuilding. “But the main house of the Wilder farm stood right here.” Wilder farm? She knows something. Why else would she drag their corpses into our lives? “Rumor has it, the builder knew the history of these grounds and refused to build on it.”
James leans in. “What history?” His eyes grow large, bulging like twin blue eggs.
“The story goes the Wilders were feuding with local Indians.”
“Knew it.” His features set in, a staunch refusing to believe whatever else might stream from her mouth. “There’s always an Indian in the story.”
A dull laugh rattles and dies in my chest. Little does he know there has been an Indian in our story for six short years.
“What happened?” I take a timid step forward, suddenly the ground feels sacred. I’m half-afraid if I comb back the kindling beneath my feet I’ll find the past right there staring back at me in some mirrored world—Reagan locked on the other side, irretrievable.
McCafferty’s nostrils flare. “Tempers heated over who the land belonged to. One night there was a fire in the Wilder home. Both parents were burned alive, but when relatives came, they couldn’t find any of their five young children.”
My heart ratchets up slowly at first, then with the speed and finality of a roller coaster shooting straight to hell.
“What became of them?” I whisper as if they were here lurking somewhere, and I didn’t want to wake them. God knows I don’t want to wake a single ghost from anyone’s past, let alone my own.
She shakes her head, that ultra-tight bun has pulled her eyes back, made her look ten years younger than she is, I’m sure. “Not one of them was ever seen again. The farm became this thing, this folklore, about a dozen urban legends spawned from the very soil you’re standing on. Nobody dared build over it. Some claimed the ground was cursed by those Indians.”
“They took the kids.” James shrugs it off. “Why is that so hard for anybody to believe? It’s the only logical explanation. Or hell, they could have banded together and headed out West. Everyone was doing it. There were no phones, no Google search, no dim-witted police department to help them out. If you wanted to disappear, it was the perfect time to do it.”
McCafferty sheds that signature mocking smile. “That might have been true, but two of the five were blind, one was lame, and the other two were infants.”
“But the Indians still could have taken them, right?” My heart gives a steady knock over my chest and I rub my neck as if pleading with my body to keep from malfunctioning.
“The Indian tribe was raided by the government. They searched high and low for those kids. They swore they didn’t have them. The dim-witted police even went as far as digging up the reservation, looking for bones. Sent in hounds—the whole nine yards.” She steps between James and me while inspecting the ground as if she might come across a skull, a hand spiking up from the soil in need of assistance. “Want to know what the Indians said happened?”
James and I exchange a brief glance, each too weary to admit we don’t.
“They said the ground swallowed them up as a punishment for the sins of their parents. To the tribe, at the time, it was a mercy killing on behalf of the earth. By swallowing the children, they were now one with the soil. They were a part of this deity, this rock they worshipped. It had all somehow come full circle.”
“Sounds like bullshit.” James wipes the sleep from his eyes. That look on his face doesn’t even crest disgust. He’s simply dismissed everything she’s just said to us.
McCafferty gives a shrug of the shoulders. “Just thought I’d let you know before some reporter started to spout things off. Your father was the one who mentioned the gap in the woods. I told him I’d look into it.”
His eyes round out a moment before he goes right back to dismissing all thoughts of earth swallowing anyone whole. It figures that his father would have landed us on this morbid topic to begin with. Morbidity in and of itself has plagued the Price family for years. James and I are going through hell, but his parents beat us to it.
McCafferty starts heading back toward the street. Her footsteps carefully lift the ground fog making her feet disappear and the very sight of her has an ethereal flair. “The Indians believe in just punishments, that whole circle of life thing. You take our land; you will become our land. I guess you can say they take their curses pretty seriously.” We watch as the mist swallows her, but it’s not good enough. A part of me wishes the ground had yawned open its greedy mouth and ate McCafferty for breakfast. How dare she align her thoughts with Heather Evans of all people. Dear God, what the hell is happening? “For what it’s worth, my sister is a realtor. You know what she always says? The people don’t pick the neighborhood, the neighborhood picks the people.” Her lips pull tight. Idiot. “If I get any new leads, I’ll get in touch.”
Her words re
sonate in my mind long after she’s no longer visible. They take their curses pretty seriously.
Heather thought Len was cursed and I all but laughed. It’s not true. There is no bullshit curse. This is just another mind game the universe is trying to take me down with.
Len wasn’t cursed and neither is Reagan. But that doesn’t stop me from dropping to my knees and clawing at the soft piles of dry brush. A fresh bite of soil hits my nostrils as my fingers feverishly comb through years of debris. James tries to pick me up again, but I scratch and claw at the earth as if I were rabid. She’s here. Something’s here. It’s that smell. It’s making me mad.
Where in the hell is my baby?
I hit soil and grind a fistful in my hand before pitching it to the sky.
The soil rains all of its fury right back over the two of us as if to say there is nobody to blame but you.
“Come here,” James says tenderly as he lands his arms around me. His phone jumps out of his pocket and lands face up before me like an offering.
A text is there to greet us. Hannigan again. It has a ring to it.
Coming out to visit soon. Time to show you my stomach.
My heart thumps all the way into my skull. Why do I get the feeling Hannigan isn’t some fifty-year-old beer-bellied man from the city?
James
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I could blame my father or McCafferty on the fact she dragged us out for that ridiculous history lesson from the annals of Friday the 13th, but really, I should place the blame where it truly belongs—square on my shoulders.
I told Allison, rather conveniently, that Hannigan, this man from work, my old work when I still was viably employable, was threatening to come out to help with the search. He meant to say he can’t wait to show me what he can stomach. I had told him no in an earlier, verbal conversation—that not even I could stomach what was happening.
The deception flowed from me like oil. How quickly my mouth had become a hot sewer of deceit.
You see, once you tell a lie you need to cover it with another lie, and that lie quickly blossoms into a tangled web of deceit the size of the damn universe. It’s like a game of telephone gone bad. You’re so far away from the truth, you almost want to laugh or in my case claw your eyes out at the very same time.
Hailey Oden is having somebody’s baby. For now, she wants me to believe it’s mine. It very well could be, and that alone scares me almost as much as having Reagan out there in this world, God only knows where. And speaking of which, since God does know where and isn’t opposed to keeping it a secret, one of the local morning shows has offered to hear our story, and they’ve tossed in a psychic just to sweeten the deal. Both Allison and I outright refused. The last thing we want this circus to turn into is, well, a bigger circus. But both Rich and McCafferty said it would be a good idea to try to regain the trust of the public once again. As of right now, my wife and I are the two most hated people on the planet. The Western world has pegged us for the crime, hung us by our ankles in the very public square of the comments’ section in just about every online article, and don’t get me started on the fact we have been the brunt of tasteless late night television jokes as well. Nothing is sacred anymore. It’s open season on the Price family, no matter how big our loss.
At five forty-five Halloween morning, Allison and I march ourselves down to KWTV for hair and makeup. We have another shot to make things right with the imbeciles who have chosen to judge us, and this is our shining moment. Sons of bitches, bastards. I wish I could kill them all. A visual of that brain-stained dining room fills my mind like a screen saver that refuses to dissipate. I’d love to take them all on one by one. God knows I have the pent-up rage to do it. My blood boils like a lava current through me. All I see is red.
An employee from the studio meets us at the gate and escorts us to the makeup lounge, an over lit room with a few stray women all waiting to greet us, but it’s the tall brunette with knife sharp teeth that sends a chill up my spine.
“Well, look who the cat dragged in!” Monica Phillips dances over with her boobs swinging side to side like a pendulum underneath her sweater. “You handsome devil, you. I knew you would be here today!” She throws her arms around me in a strangulating hug, and Allison rolls her eyes at the sight. “I put a good word in to the boss for you and your wife,” she whispers directly into my ear, her lips molesting the hell out of it while she’s at it and I shudder.
So this was Monica’s doing. “I’m not sure if I should thank you just yet.” I offer up a forced smile.
“I’m doing you.” Her tongue does a quick revolution of her lips. Monica dusts my nose with her finger while pushing me back into a waiting chair. I give a nervous glance to my wife. Women coming on to me is what got us into this nightmare to begin with. Little did I know one tug at the string of lust and my world, our worlds would unravel like a cheap sweater. Allison pitches her brows, bemused as she settles next to me. A demure brunette with thick red glasses wordlessly gets to work on her, and I cringe at the torment that’s about to begin for me.
“Handsome here and I used to date.” Monica smacks my forehead with a sponge before aggressively dotting my face with it. “Isn’t that right? We were in l-u-v.”
Allison twitches a smile, but she’s too sane to give it. We are grieving our missing child for shit’s sake. How does any of this feel appropriate to this woman? She’s batshit all right. I called it years ago.
“But life happened, didn’t it?” She reaches for a pair of tweezers and gives a few quick pinches over the bridge of my nose, clipping over my eye like a fire line and I grunt through it.
“Painful.” I try to tough it out without squirming. This right here is why I could never have been a woman. I would have made a lousy tranny, too, failed Woman 101 right off the eyebrow plucking bat. She gouges into my skin, and I reflexively move her away. “Shit. Sorry.”
“Play nice.” Allison warms the room with her voice. I really do love that woman. I wish with everything in me that I could go back in time and say no to the damn pool party for two. The affair never would have started. Hailey would not be threatening to show me her stomach. God forbid. And we never would have moved to Timbuktu, Idaho to get the hell away from her. Reagan would be safe in my arms.
A wave of emotion sweeps over me and my insides buck in lieu of weeping.
And just like that, I forget how to breathe. I cheated on my wife and now my child is missing. My father’s favorite words come back to me—the wages of sin is death. I’ve done this. My randy balls and I have effectively taken down my entire family, and the most innocent party of all is suffering greatly for it.
A deep, guttural twist of grief envelops me. It churns inside of me until I can no longer breathe under its weight.
“So tell us about it.” Allison gives something just this side of a wink to Monica. A sign of eminent danger. That partial ocular twitch is what she likes to invoke while she’s sharpening the claws, out for blood. Her enemy just doesn’t know it yet. “Lay it all out. How did it go down? Was there a messy breakup involved?” Her voice is jubilant and light, but I see her ready to pounce and eviscerate. She’s just as pissed at Monica as I am.
Monica bucks with a laugh.
Shit.
“The prince and I dated for almost four years.” A smug look crosses her face with something vindictive layered just beneath. She pulls a comb from the drawer and rakes it over my scalp, hard, like razor blades.
“Four years?” Allison leans over to get a good look at me, her eyes wild with disbelief. “That’s incredible. You’ve never mentioned her. We’ve been married for six.”
“Almost seven.” I glower up at Monica. Obviously, she’s getting her sick little jollies off while extracting a little revenge.
“It was like a marriage.” The words strum from her lips almost catatonic. “At least it was to me. I appreciated every carnal inch of this boy.” Her eyes gloss over and she blinks back tears. “But then he was off to W
ake. A college man. He didn’t have a need for a hometown girl. She dabs the sponge in pink powder before bouncing it over my cheeks. “Dumb ol’ girl like me. He wanted something fresh, something blonde, something only California could deliver in some spray tan—peroxide little package.”
“I was a blonde for a time.” Ally presses her lips together before giving a mock kiss to the mirror.
“Never wrote, never called.” Monica dips the sponge back into the ruddy powder, then dab, dab, dab right over my flesh. I can feel my flesh lighting up like a rash. “I came out once, but he was already with you.”
I shoot a look to her. I have zero recollection of this trip. But then again, my mind has settled down in a very dark place and sleep is essentially a stranger to me. Monica could have camped out in my dorm for all I remember.
“I saw the two of you having fun.” She shakes her head, staring intently at my features. “Him sticking his hands up your shirt as if you were a common street whore.”
“Monica, enough!” the petite brunette working on Allison finally pipes up. Her face is flustered, and she says exactly what I’m dying to say. “We’d better get them on set.”
Monica spins me toward the mirror and I’m greeted with a clown’s face, pale, doughy, with cheeks that look as if someone spent a solid year slapping. Nice touch. It’s nice to know, despite the morbid facts surrounding my life, revenge still isn’t off the table. I head to the restroom and tone it down, smearing that strawberry stained crap all over the place. I look like hell. Infected. Disease-ridden. I probably should. My heart has been diseased for some time now.
I can’t help but note the studio is smaller than anticipated as they hook Allison and me up with mics. The morning hosts, two women who look interchangeable with their painted-on smiles, short blonde hair, have a chuckle over a parade of kids in Halloween costumes before losing their smiles as they segue into our segment.
Psychological Thriller Boxed Set Page 41