Rites of Extinction

by Matt Serafini

  “Used to bike out here to get pie. Want to know more you could always ask the sheriff.”

  “I’m interested in your perspective.”

  “You know who knew her? Cassie Pennington. Go ask her.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “Right, okay,” Danielle says. “Cassie sorted mail at the post office until she was caught opening envelopes she wasn’t supposed to. Got exiled back to the dirt farm for that. But while she was employed, she became friends with Dalise . . . uh, that’s the sheriff’s sister.”

  “I know.”

  “Dalise was always hanging around town to be near her brother, and I think Cassie talked to her on her lunch breaks.”

  “What mail did Cassie open?”

  “Ask the mailmen. I think she’s just touched in the head. My dad says she’s crazier than an outhouse fly.”

  Rebecca thinks Danielle’s dad understands the way things are around here.

  “Anyone will tell you the sheriff’s sister was young, and how it’s a great shame, but there was no shortage of men who turned their heads to gawk as she passed by.”

  “Guys are something else,” Rebecca says.

  The young woman snorts, shakes her head as if it’s the only way to change her expression.

  “What’d they do to Dalise?”

  “They killed her.”

  “I mean . . . what’d they do to her? In the barn.”

  “What’d you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t. It’s Rebecca.”

  Danielle’s eyes harden into little pellets of gravel. “Cut her from her skin. Hung it up in the barn like an old suit.”

  “Why did they do that?”

  “Oh, the town loves to talk about why.”

  “Such as?”

  “My hairdresser thinks Paul wanted to be a woman. How’s that for starters? Others say Paul and Cassie were running drugs into town, killed the sheriff’s sister to keep him complacent.”

  “Paul and Cassie,” Rebecca says. “Were they that close?” Another surge of irrational anger mounts in her heart. Primal jealously she’s never felt.

  Danielle shrugs. “I couldn’t say.”

  “Will Paul try and find Cassie? I mean, in your opinion.”

  “I don’t believe Paul’s alive.”

  “But if he is . . .”

  “If he is, and that’s a big if, I don’t think much can keep those two apart.”

  “Peas in a pod?”

  “Cassie’s gonna snap one of these days. Kill people. And everyone will pretend they’re surprised about it. A fortune teller would say it’s already in the cards.”

  “You said the body of Dalise Cortez was found in your barn?”

  Danielle points a finger. “Go right out that side door and you can see for yourself. Not sure what you’re hoping to find, though.”

  “Me either,” Rebecca says. “But I’ve come all this way.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “Thanks . . . this is a lot of pies.”

  “This is a business.”

  “Yeah, but . . . this is a lot.”

  “Some law against baking them?”

  “I don’t know any.”

  “Why do you care, then?”

  “I just . . . noticed you already have a freezer full.” Rebecca sails her thumb toward the freezer case. The frosted glass door brims with homemade meat pies among other things.

  “Catered event,” the woman says.

  “Lucky them. They smell awesome.”

  “The best. Can I go, officer?”

  “Oh, I’m not a cop.”

  “Could’ve fooled me.” Danielle shrugs.

  Rebecca watches her get back to work. She goes right into the kitchen and never comes out again.

  15

  THE BARN AWAITS REBECCA JUST through the side door.

  She crosses a patch of ground where the gravel becomes dirt and then grass. The barn sits beside a feeding pen. Beyond it is a field of grazing sheep and clucking chickens.

  Her phone buzzes in her pocket as soon as she steps inside. More desperation, just a bunch of would-be interruptions from a voice she doesn’t care to hear. She swipes to ignore the conversation and figures Bret can keep shouting into traffic while she side-steps horse shit.

  It’s easy to find the spot where Dalise Cortez’s skin was hung up. It’s the only area in here where the walls are unnaturally bare.

  “What were you going to do with this girl’s skin, Paul?”

  The sputtering reliability of a tractor grumbles up over the hill across the street. Rebecca turns and catches an older man eyeing her from atop a John Deere, chewing a cigar like it’s beef jerky.

  He drives right over and sits idling.

  “You must be the Herbert in Herbert’s Farm,” she says.

  He tries for a modest smile, but his face is all leather. “My farm, missy. You need help with the store then Danielle can take care of you.”

  Rebecca flashes the photo again. Thinks she might as well glue the damn thing to the palm of her hand. “Danielle thinks this guy’s dead.”

  “She probably wishes it were so.”

  “You know him, then?”

  “He used to screw his girlfriend right here inside these walls.” Herbert frowns sour. “I can’t tell you why. I look the sort of man who understands kids today? Probably looking for a thrill or some damn thing.”

  “You actually saw them?”

  “Sure did. I’ve known Cassie Pennington since she spoke in baby coos. Recognized her right off. Probably wouldn’t have known anything at all if not for the animals making ungodly noises out here at all hours of the night. To think what those sickos might’ve been doing to my—”

  “Seriously? To your . . . horses?”

  Herbert shrugs. “Anything’s possible is what I’m saying. Some of these creatures ain’t been right since. And I don’t have it in my heart to know the truth. ’Cause then I might be tempted to load up the double barrel and . . . well, might not know it to look at me, but I am an animal lover at heart.”

  His face is harder than a leather switch, but his eyes are soft and Rebecca decides it’s an easy thing to believe.

  “To answer your question,” he says. “No. I don’t think he’s dead.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why would he be? Someone that foul ain’t gonna do the world any favors by just up and disappearing. That’d be too easy on the rest of us. Nah. Someone that foul doesn’t go quietly.”

  “That is what I’m afraid of,” Rebecca says.

  “Shoot straight with me, missy,” Herbert says. “I like to know where a person stands on the things they’re asking about. So, tell me . . . where are you on this?”

  “I think he’s here. Somewhere in town.”

  “And you’re hunting him?” He smiles, finding comfort in that thought. “Knew it as soon as I glanced you from across the way.”

  “If I can ask . . . why is Danielle so sure that Paul is dead?”

  Herbert frowns once more. His face looks most natural in that mode. “Danielle’s world is here. Baking pies. Tending register. Feeding animals. She can pretend the world’s frosted flakes and strawberries ’cause on these acres, that’s exactly what it is. Is that boy dead? Not a chance in hell, missy. But she can afford to think it.”

  “Kids, right?”

  The old man laughs. “We blame kids ’cause they’re easy to blame. It’s Bright Fork that’s the problem. Place is changing.”

  “Changing?”

  “City people moving here like there’s a goddamn gold rush.”

  “Sick of the noise and the bustle and—”

  “Made their corner of the world worse, then left in droves rather than fix it. Bringing there to here to do it all over again.”

  “What do the locals make of it?”

  The farmer slaps his knee, makes some rusty hinge noise. “Driving up taxes? Driving out family businesses and then trying to bring in all their bullshit?
We’ve had four town hall meetings so far just to keep goddamn Starbucks out of here. How do you think the locals are taking it?”

  “Why Bright Fork, though?” Rebecca asks. “No offense. It’s just that this place is—”

  “In the middle of nowhere? That’s why we like it. But them? Wish I knew.”

  “Another weird question,” Rebecca says. “Do you do catering here?”

  “Suppose we could if it ever came up. But it’s never come up. Why?”

  “No reason,” she says. “Just think those pies in there look good and my mind went wandering.”

  “You want a pie, I’ll get you a pie.”

  “No, really, it’s okay.”

  But Herbert seems excited to get her one. Begins to climb down off the tractor, groaning and grumbling with every twitch of his muscles. To watch him struggle is devastating. Rebecca begs him to stop, but like every old man she’s ever known, he’s more stubborn than a house cat.

  “It’s fine,” she says. “Really. I was just thinking out loud.”

  “Goddamn weather,” he snaps, scapegoating the chilly air. “Ain’t supposed to be this cold in spring.” The old man hates it, but his aching body makes the concession easier than it should be. “Arthritis turns me tighter than a screw.”

  “Sorry to bother you,” Rebecca says and starts to leave.

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” he says. “If you do find him . . . I hope you’ll kill him.”

  “For the things he’s done?”

  “Aye, sure,” the old man says. “But I’m talking about you.”

  “Me?”

  “See it in your eyes. No offense, but you’ve already got one foot in the grave. I ain’t one to pry, so I’m not gonna ask about it, but you got eyes like you’re chasing Armageddon into a hurricane.”

  “Maybe I do,” Rebecca says.

  “I think about it, you know. Knowing those mad dogs were in my barn . . . so close to my daughter. Wind only needed to shift one way and they could’ve run across her and . . .” He doesn’t finish that sentence.

  “That’s not going to happen,” she says.

  “Way I see it, you’re looking for a righteous kill. You want the truth, I’ve laid in bed awake on more than one night wishing I’d blasted him with my double barrel.”

  Rebecca nods like she knows the feeling.

  “I’m sorry to be so blunt about things, but I don’t suffer fools gladly.” Herbert clicks his tongue and offers a consolatory smile. “Truth of it anyway, I’m probably just exaggerating about that shotgun business.”

  “I wish you weren’t,” she says. “I wish you had done it.”

  16

  HALFWAY BACK TO TOWN PROPER, Rebecca stomps the brakes.

  Farmland stretches for miles on either side of the road, but something in the distance beyond the tilled earth catches her eye.

  Her heart drums as she climbs out and hops the old log fence. The ancient wood wobbles beneath her weight and she curses like it’s an obstacle placed here just to slow her down.

  At the back of the field and facing the forest stands an army of scarecrows. Spaced perfectly like infantrymen on a battlefield.

  Rebecca strides toward them, counting the sprawl of bodies as she goes.

  Fourteen in total.

  None are as sharp-dressed as the sentry hoisted up at the Pennington Residence. These wear shredded denim and torn plaid. Homemade straw hats. No animal heads here. Just button eyes sewn on stained burlap. Rebecca goes all the way down the line, inspecting each like a drill instructor.

  Why would anyone place this many together?

  A few of the scarecrows have shirt flaps undone. Rebecca reaches up and pulls the fabric aside. Bloodstained hay bales are stuffed hastily inside the recessed cavity. She lifts the flap higher and finds the area around the hole is rotted flesh that’s wet, on the verge of liquefaction. Small, emaciated breasts dangle off worn skin that’s tight against rounded ribs.

  Rebecca gasps, fingers to mouth, as she steps back and looks down the line. She half expects all the burlap heads to be craned in her direction and is relieved when they’re not. She moves to the next scarecrow and finds the same arrangement beneath its shirt. Raisin breasts, gray skin. Long dead. Checks another. Keeps going until she’s got fourteen hay-stuffed corpses, each of them female. Their clothes are torn at random where birds have pecked little hunks of meat off their bones, and she doesn’t have to examine those holes any further to know that flies have long since laid eggs inside of them. If Rebecca listens close, she can almost hear the maggots crunching their way through flesh, breaking these bodies down to nothing.

  “He hasn’t stopped,” she says, almost silent. Paul hasn’t stopped committing murders at all. He’s only getting started.

  Rebecca can’t speak to anyone about this. A decision that’s antithetical to a quarter-century of sharply honed law enforcement instincts. Blowing the whistle on these bodies means Bright Fork gets more attention—probably federal. Washington’s about as smart as a stick, but there’s nowhere to hide in a town this small. Sooner or later she’d be tripping over feds.

  And if Special Agent Dale Cooper does come to town, Paul will know right off who he’s looking for. If Paul disappears again, Rebecca will never find him.

  That’s not an option.

  She stares up at the fourteen bodies, all mothers and daughters, wondering how in the hell so many people can go missing without a whisper?

  You know why, she thinks. It’s not even really a question.

  “Paul isn’t the only one.”

  17

  ST. CECILIA’S SITS AT THE OTHER edge of town, surrounded by forests so thick it seems to Rebecca she’s traveled back in time.

  She rolls to a stop at the tip of the narrow path where the road bottlenecks, flanked by tombstones so old their engravings have been smoothed away. Completely erased. This country isn’t as old as these markers look.

  Her head throbs. Only a few pills rattle around inside the Advil bottle now.

  A young priest in a gray frock appears in the doorway. He smiles guiltily. Behind him, the thick oak slams shut, sending the perched ravens overhead scattering.

  “Not many visitors out here,” he says. The meaning behind his words is, Why are you here?

  “Not visiting.” Rebecca fishes for the Advil and eyes the father through the windshield. He stuffs a tease of tobacco inside his corncob pipe, settles against a tree.

  Rebecca decides she might need her pistol, too, forgetting for a moment Cortez is holding onto it for safekeeping.

  “What are you selling, then?” he says as she climbs out.

  “Sightseeing.”

  With a grin, “Well, why didn’t you say so?”

  “You taking over this parish?”

  He tsks his tongue, suddenly sad in a way that wouldn’t fool a voter. “I am,” he says, then adds “regrettably” before pouting his lips. His mouth is the size of a bullhorn, and his receding hairline’s halfway gone. “Helping the world to move on from such an . . . unspeakable tragedy. Father Kindry was beloved.”

  She starts past and he sticks his arm out. He doesn’t touch, only signals a stop as he lifts his chin to get a better look at this sightseer. The smoke rising up from his pipe becomes a veil between them.

  Rebecca holds there a quick moment. For a second, there’s something familiar about him. A face you met at a dinner party long ago, with whom you exchanged brief pleasantries. A face she’s dreamt. But, no, this is a stranger’s face and anything more is just a trick of the light . . . right? Rebecca looks him over again, decides, yes.

  “Okay,” he says. Repeats “Okay” and laughs about it. “It is hardly our custom to scrutinize. God’s house is open to any and all.” He lifts his arm like it’s a tollbooth gate and Rebecca heads toward the narthex.

  Old habits strike Rebecca there. Alien gestures that belong to the world she left behind. The urge to sign the cross upon entrance. She’s close to doing it, fingers gliding
toward the holy water bowl. She stops just as they’re about to take the dip and thinks, Nope.

  That life’s gone. The man upstairs doesn’t want her now. Because she’d never be able to look at him and repent for the things she’s done.

  For what she’s about to do.

  Her Uggs sound like horse clops as she walks the center aisle. At first glance, it’s any old church. Funded by the local diocese, but living mainly off whatever the people of Bright Fork can afford to donate. Not very showy. Stain glass windows throw kaleidoscopic shadows across the floor and rainbow light shimmers in her peripheral.

  The priest comes back inside while she’s lost in prosaic thoughts—weddings, first communions, hers and Jaime’s, all the lies she used to tell herself about the lord’s grand designs.

  The priest stands inside the narthex. His hand rakes the wall of pamphlet literature while tobacco notes spread the smell of roasted leaves. The way the window light catches him only a few jagged slats of his face are visible, revealing wide-flung Bela Lugosi eyes.

  “Tell me about this site,” Rebecca says suddenly, almost unconsciously.

  He stands unmoving. Rebecca resumes her stroll, loud footsteps circling the nave as she examines the altar from afar.

  “Site,” he says as if he needed extra time to conjure the right amount of indignant.

  “Yeah.”

  “Seems you already know something.”

  “I know we love to pretend that Christianity was the first practiced religion in the United States.” Rebecca’s heart rate quickens at the challenge. This is a heated conversation now and she doesn’t know why. Only that her opinions on this are absolute.

  “Oh, I’m sure there were others . . . but what matters is—”

  “Whether it’s Protestantism, Catholicism, doesn’t especially matter. Because what they don’t tell you is many of these churches were built where they are very deliberately.”

  “Deliberately?” he speaks with insufferable smugness.

  “To cover up pagan sites from one coast to the next,” Rebecca says. These words are hers, birthed from knowledge that is not. The blood coursing through her veins suddenly hurts, as if thickened jelly is being pumped to her organs.