He started toward her slowly, sure of himself. Only when he was two feet from her did she find her voice and scream.
“Honey, do you want some eggs?” Terri called to Paul from the hallway.
Paul’s attention snapped from the blinking cursor on his page to the door. “Well, Dana, I guess we have to wait until later to see what happens to you. I wish you luck.” He saved the document and shut the laptop.
He glanced at his phone. No calls. No texts. He was in the hallway, heading for the kitchen, when the idea struck him. “Terri, I think we should make a trip upstate to Bellton.”
Terri grinned at him, and Stevie cheered from his position on the couch, a superhero cartoon blaring on the TV.
_______________
Taylor hadn’t spent much time in Red Creek as a kid. That week she had, they’d arrived at night and had left a few days later. Still, the feeling of oppression was heavy as they entered the town proper, heading past dilapidated homes as they neared the main drag.
“Where are we?” Brent asked softly, his eyes darting around the old town. “I know you said it wasn’t much to look at, but this is something else.”
Taylor was finding the air hard to breathe inside her car, and she pressed the window button, cool, wet air giving her a slight reprieve. “I know. It’s strange. Isabelle says it’s like the townspeople don’t even know how bad it is. It’s like they never leave and see other places to compare it to.”
They kept driving until the sign for Chuck’s came into view. “Park here,” she suggested, and he started to turn the car around, waiting for an old truck to pass first, before cutting in front of the oncoming traffic. The driver of the other vehicle glared at them from behind a cracked windshield.
“Friendly locals,” Brent muttered, and for the first time, Taylor considered what her boyfriend was wearing. He had on an emerald-green polo shirt and pink shorts, wearing tan loafers and no socks. With his perfectly-styled hair and his pearly white smile, he looked like a model. He wasn’t going to fit in well in Red Creek.
“What are you looking at?” he asked as he threw the car in park.
She laughed, feeling better that he was there with her. She didn’t think she’d have been able to drive into town without him.
“You’re too handsome for your own good,” Taylor said as she opened the door and stepped onto the street. She’d done it. She was back.
“I hope this place is good, because I’m starving.” Brent shut the car off, and they met in front of the restaurant. Another five vehicles were parked in a row, and Taylor smelled the familiar scent of eggs and bacon mixed with coffee.
They entered through the glass door, classic metal chimes announcing their arrival. Taylor had never been inside the restaurant. The one time she’d been close, she briefly recalled stepping onto the pavement before she was taken.
She glanced out to the street where it had happened, and intense fear rushed into her. She closed her eyes and saw her mom frantically searching for her as she was dragged away, unable to scream.
“Taylor?” a voice called from the other end of the diner. She snapped out of it as her cousin raced over to her, arms spread wide.
“Isabelle!” Taylor said, wrapping her cousin in a big hug. “It’s so good to see you!” She meant it. They’d become close as little girls, only ever seeing each other when the family came to visit them in Manhattan.
“Likewise,” Isabelle said. She was wearing a pale blue uniform, the name Chuck’s stitched above the left breast. Her cousin wore her hair in twin braids, each hanging over her shoulders. It made her look younger than she was. “This must be Brent.”
Brent stuck his hand out to shake Isabelle’s, but the girl gave him a hug instead. “We’re all family.”
A thought struck Taylor with such ferocity, she almost ran for the door. “Where’s Chuck?”
“You mean Charlie? He’s not in until two this afternoon,” Isabelle said, and relief flooded Taylor.
“Good. He knows my dad and still talks to him occasionally.” And, as if she needed to explain this to her bewildered cousin: “Remember, I’m not supposed to be here.”
“I know. I just hope Mom can keep it to herself. You know how she loves spreading gossip,” Isabelle said, emphasizing the statement with a dramatic eye roll.
“How about some food?” Brent asked, and Isabelle led them into the diner, toward a private booth at the edge.
A few tables were full. A pair of seniors sat quietly sipping coffee at one, a young family with two screaming children at another. The dad glanced at Taylor apologetically before shoving a crayon toward the kid with jam all over his face.
“Remind me never to have kids,” Brent whispered to her, and she laughed, unsure how to reply.
They weren’t in that kind of relationship where they openly talked about their future together. Maybe she did want kids, but she was only twenty, and her parents had reiterated that she shouldn’t make any major life decisions until she was thirty. Taylor thought that was a little overkill, but got their point.
Isabelle placed two laminated menus on the table top. Taylor’s legs stuck to the red nylon bench cover as she shifted position, letting Brent slide in beside her.
“I’ll be back with coffee. Judy makes a mean omelette if you’re into that kind of thing.” Her cousin left, and Brent looked after her.
“She’s a cute one. Why is she still here in Red Creek?” Brent asked, striking a nerve.
Taylor didn’t want to show it, but Isabelle was more than cute. She’d always felt inadequate around the younger girl. Any time they’d go out in the city, boys gave her the attention, and for the most part, that was fine with Taylor, but to hear Brent say it set her blood boiling.
“She doesn’t know what to do. The schools here suck, and her grades weren’t fantastic, so she’s taking some night classes online and wants to eventually get to Bellton too. We’ll be roommates,” Taylor said, and suddenly, the dream the two girls had shared for so long felt false, a lie they told themselves to keep going.
“That sounds good. What are you having?” Brent asked, and Taylor scanned the menu, not even seeing the words across it.
She was here in Red Creek, and it seemed sad but normal. After years of fear-mongering by her parents, she wondered if any of it was real. Her memories of that night felt real enough, but somehow, sitting in the diner, it felt like it might be a sham.
Isabelle came over, poured them two coffees from the classic metal-bottomed carafe, and asked what she could get for them. She was so professional, and Taylor bet the locals loved her.
“Cheese omelette with mushrooms and bacon, please.” Brent slid his menu toward her and leaned in with a grin over his face.
“That sounds good. Make it two,” Taylor said without thought.
“I’ll be right back. It’s quiet. We can talk,” Isabelle said, and sauntered off toward the kitchen.
“So what are we going to do here?” Brent asked, looking around the room. “This town doesn’t seem like a nice place to visit. Do they have a theater or anything?”
Taylor shook her head. “Gilden is down the highway. They have all the stuff you’d expect from a civilized town. We can head there for a day or two this week,” she promised.
Isabelle was back in a few minutes with their plates, piled high with hash browns and toast beside the omelettes. It was far too much food. Brent didn’t seem to think twice as he dug into it, eating with the ferocity of a twenty-year-old man.
“Still no word on Brittany Tremblay?” Taylor asked quietly.
“Nothing. Dad says they found her pants and a shoe in the garbage can at her house, and the gate was unlatched. Other than that, there’s no sign of her. Mom’s freaking out, Tay. She won’t let me out of her sight, like I’m a little girl. I keep telling her that it doesn’t take adults, unless they get in the way.” Isabelle spoke in hushed tones, and Taylor leaned in to hear her.
“Wait. Who’s this ‘it’ you’re talki
ng about?” Brent asked between bites.
Isabelle glanced up at Taylor, meeting her gaze. “I meant them… the Smiths only take kids,” the waitress said.
“But I thought they were all dead now. At least, the ones involved.” Brent spread some jam over a slightly burned piece of toast.
Taylor thought about that. Actually, she was related to the Smiths. Her grandmother had lost the name when her mother had married, long ago. That fact didn’t sit easily with Taylor.
“And no kid has gone missing in twelve years, until now,” Isabelle said, gaze darting to the door as the chimes rang. “I have to work. Taylor, can you make a list, and we’ll start on it later.”
Taylor nodded and pulled her phone out, opening a new document. She added items to the list, things they needed to do to get to the bottom of the history behind the Smiths and their pact with the creature living at the orchard for over a century.
Five
Detective Tom Bartlett sat in the living room and felt like he was in a time warp. The couch cushions were woven together, a thick material he hadn’t seen since he was a kid in his grandma’s basement. The coffee table was old, scratches lined its wax-covered top, and his cup of coffee steamed from its resting place on a coaster.
“So she went to her room to do school work, and you didn’t see her again?” Tom asked for the third time.
Carol Tremblay was shaking, and Tom hadn’t seen her eyes dry in the half hour he’d been there. She had a constant supply of tissues being pulled, then tucked into her long sweater sleeves. It reminded him of a sad magician.
Ben answered the question. “That’s what we said.”
“Do you usually check on her? Say goodnight? Things like that?” Tom asked, his pen hovering over his notepad. So far, he had some chicken scratches, but mostly he was doodling their house’s exterior.
Carol seemed guilty now, and Tom leaned forward, wondering if they had something important to say finally. “She’s thirteen. And she can be a little… abrupt. We’ve been giving her more space. She’s found some new friends, though, and that seems to have lifted her spirits somewhat.”
“Friends. Can you tell me who these friends are?” Tom asked, ready to document something real on his pad.
Ben spoke now. “Haven’t met them, but I do remember her telling me a name.”
Tom tapped his notepad with the tip of his pen, small dots formed in a bunch.
“Abigail. The friend’s name is Abigail,” Ben said, and Tom felt sorry for the man. He was fifty, bald, and well on his way to an early heart attack. And now his daughter was missing.
“Only a first name? Nothing else?” Tom pressed.
“That’s it. It’s Friday, so school’s on right now. Maybe they can find her if you need to speak with her,” Carol said, and Tom knew he’d do just that. There was a chance Brittany had been speaking with some boys, maybe older boys, maybe even men. If someone would know about that, it would be the girl’s closest friends.
“What happened to her, Detective?” Carol asked, tears flowing once again.
Tom stood up, thinking about the pants in the garbage, and the matching shoe found in the mud a half mile from her house. It didn’t add up. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
He left the grieving parents behind and headed toward Red Creek’s one and only school.
_______________
“Which one was your dad’s?” Brent asked as he slowed the car.
“This one,” Taylor said, pointing across the street at the dilapidated home. She only briefly recalled being there as her dad and Uncle Darrel finished packing it up, before they left Red Creek for good. It had been so full of her grandma’s things. Taylor had taken a teddy bear from the piles and kept it in her closet at the Manhattan townhouse.
“It looks… vacant.” Brent was right. The windows were boarded up; a sun-bleached For Sale sign swung in the wind.
“What happened to it?” she asked herself, and got out of the car.
She heard Brent say something as she shut the door, and Taylor crossed the street, heading for the yard. She glanced over to see Brent park the car and run over to her side.
“I don’t think you’re going to get any answers here,” he said, and she knew he was right. But maybe one of the neighbors knew something.
She walked up the driveway and made for the front door. All accessible windows were covered with planks of wood or plywood, looking long abandoned and likely bank-owned. Taylor pulled the screen door open and tried the door, finding it locked.
“Let’s check the other one,” she said.
Brent didn’t argue, and they meandered around the old stucco-covered house, entering the back yard. It was a mess: thatches of tall dead grass jutted out from the still frozen snow-covered corner, where the sun didn’t hit.
The rear windows were covered just like the front of the house, and Taylor tested the door, surprised to find it unlocked. It looked like the door jamb had been pried open at some point, the lock unable to fully latch.
“Wait. Someone broke in. They could still be inside,” Brent warned.
“Probably some local kids being stupid. I doubt anyone would be in there,” Taylor said.
“Wait here.” Brent was running through the mud now, and Taylor watched as he narrowly avoided slipping on his way to a shed at the edge of the yard. Seconds later, he was marching with an old wooden baseball bat in his hand. Taylor wondered if it had been her dad’s at one point.
She pushed the door open, and it creaked in response. Her heart rate sped up as her foot entered the house. What did she hope to accomplish coming here? It wasn’t going to help her investigation, but she was drawn here for some reason. Her grandma had changed the day her dad was taken so long ago, and she couldn’t ask the woman any longer. She’d died seven years ago, after spending five years in Greenbriar with dementia.
Brent reached forward and set a hand on her shoulder, stepping around her, the bat raised up, ready to strike.
Taylor scanned the room and found the place was pretty much empty. A few beer cans littered the floor, stains on the beige carpet in the living room. The kitchen was stripped of the appliances, and she could see rat droppings on the yellowed linoleum. She wasn’t sure why she’d come here.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s lived here in a while,” Brent said, lowering his weapon. “Did you say this missing girl was from down the street?”
Taylor nodded, heading further into the house. The living room was dark, lines of light creeping through cracks in the plywood over the main window, illuminating the floor.
Something caught her eye on the wall, and she crossed the room, carefully stepping over a pile of cigarette butts. The walls were greasy, the paint in terrible shape, but the black smudge was clear enough. It was a handprint. Taylor recalled her dad’s story about the shadow burning a handprint into the back shed, and she wondered if that mark was still there.
“Is that a handprint?” Brent asked, following her to the side of the room.
“Looks like it,” she said.
Brent was beside her, and he stretched his own hand out, placing it inches in front of the wall. “If that’s a handprint, I don’t want to see the man it belongs to.” The long black fingers were twice the length of Brent’s, the palm three times as wide.
“Neither do I,” Taylor said. She kept moving and was in the hallway now. She passed the bathroom, seeing the toilet tank broken in pieces, sections of the white porcelain lying all over the tile floor.
Her dad’s old room was to her right, and she entered it, feeling a tension she hadn’t experienced in the rest of the house. It was thick inside, even though the room was empty. Here there were only two boards nailed to the inside wall, one over the other, like a cross.
“This was Dad’s room,” Taylor told Brent, who was right behind her.
A bang from outside startled them, and Taylor jumped, swearing as her heart pounded in her chest.
“There’s no
attic floor here, I take it?” Brent asked.
“I don’t know. Doesn’t look like it.” Taylor stayed behind her boyfriend as he went over to the hall, looking up to the ceiling.
“There’s the access. Should we try it?” Brent asked.
Taylor wanted to say no, that they should leave, but she was intrigued. Why was the house empty? Was that really a handprint in the living room? If she was going to solve this mystery, she needed clues, and her list might not give her enough of those. Most of the people that could help her were long dead, so she needed remnants of the past to lead her on the right path.
“Let’s do it,” Taylor said.
“I saw a ladder in the shed. I’ll be right back,” Brent said, handing her the bat. “Here, hold on to this.”
Taylor took the heavy wooden bat. The tape on the handle pressed into her palm as she gripped it tightly. For some reason, holding it gave her power, and she watched Brent run down the hall before the screen door slammed shut. She was on edge, breaking into a grungy house trying to scrounge up anything that might point in the direction of the Smiths and their bargain.
It felt like Brent was gone for too long, and Taylor considered going outside to see what the delay was when her cell phone rang, the volume far too loud in the otherwise quiet home.
Her Aunt Beth’s name appeared, and she hit the answer icon. “Hi, Aunt Beth.” She cleared her throat after, the words sticking in her mouth.
“Everything okay? Isabelle said you were in town already,” Beth said.
“We’re fine. I brought Brent with me. I hope that’s cool. He can sleep on the couch in the basement, if you and Uncle Darrel don’t mind.” Taylor wished she hadn’t sprung that news on them, but didn’t want to risk them saying no.
After a brief pause, her aunt answered, “That’s no problem at all. I can’t believe you’re here. Whatever you do, don’t let your dad know you stayed with me. I don’t think he’d ever forgive me.”
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