Harrow Lake

by Kat Ellis

  I took too long deciding on my answer, and he let out a disappointed sigh.

  “You’re in the film. Soon everyone will be able to look at you—the whole world will look at this pretty little girl and think whatever they like about you. You can’t control what they think, what they do with you in their minds. You’re theirs now. Not mine. So why would I want to look at you?” He scrubbed a hand back through his hair. “Lola, I couldn’t bear for anyone to take you away from me. Can’t you see that? It hurts me too much to think of losing you.”

  It was like time froze. I understood. I saw what I’d done. It was supposed to just be me and Nolan. I had my own place in his life, somewhere nobody else was allowed. I didn’t belong to anyone but him.

  “I didn’t mean it,” I whispered. “Is it too late to cut me out of the film?”

  He looked at me, finally. “I already have.”

  I didn’t go on-set with him for a long time after that, and I’ve never tried to talk my way into the cast again. Now I know better.

  * * *

  • • •

  The jaunty piano music still piping through the speakers pulls me along, dragging me back to Harrow Lake. I catch glimpses of myself reflected in the gleaming store windows along Main Street, passing by like Little Bird’s shadow.

  You’re enjoying this, Nolan’s shadow whispers in my ear. You like dressing up like her. You’re glad I’m not there.

  I stop and lean against one of the store sidings, pressing my fists into my stomach.

  Stop it!

  Three days, Larry said. That’s all the time I have here. It isn’t long, and I’m not going to waste any more time having imaginary conversations.

  Striding toward the Easy Diner, I notice pre-lunch smells wafting out of the open door like they’re being carried by the tune that guides my footsteps. But the song has changed, and my stomach lurches again as I recognize it: “T’ain’t No Sin.” I see Nolan slumped against the bookcase in his study, holding his insides together with his own hands. The scratch of a needle jumping . . .

  There’s a shush from behind me, but it’s only a weeping willow tree, its leaves whispering in the breeze. There’s that strange feeling of déjà vu again, like I felt when I saw the jitterbug in Lorelei’s room—like I know this willow tree.

  It stands in front of an old building, set back from Main Street. BRYN’S MUSEUM & MEMORABILIA. Where I saw that reedy figure last night. I walk closer.

  The windows here are crusted with dirt, the paint on the door peeling like diseased skin. If not for the OPEN sign in the window, I wouldn’t think anyone had been here in years.

  This wasn’t one of the locations used to film Nightjar, but something about how it’s hidden away makes me want to go in. It feels like a secret. My Nightjar list can wait.

  I enter the museum as the final notes of “T’ain’t No Sin” fade at my back.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Inside the museum, the air smells like paper and time.

  An old man in a bow tie sits at the counter. His tawny skin is liver-spotted and sags at the jowls, making him appear delightfully morose. There’s a massive Nightjar poster on the wall behind him, positioned so it looks like Lorelei is peering over his shoulder.

  I wander around the lobby, bypassing the old man, the photographs, documents, and old clothes, and head toward an intricate sketch of a pool inside a cave. The surface is dark, flat, and glassy, with a faint circle of light shining on the center. I wipe the dusty glass with my sleeve. There’s something in the water, but I can’t make it out. Is it . . . a face?

  “Lola, isn’t it?” I jump. The old man is right behind me. I’m amazed he was able to get so close without making a sound. “I’m Mr. Bryn—a friend of your grandmother’s. I hear you’re visiting her for a spell.”

  Of course he already knows about me. So does everyone else in this town, I bet.

  “Such a lovely picture, isn’t it?”

  Not really. “Why is there a face in the water?”

  Mr. Bryn peers at the sketch. “A face?”

  “Does it have anything to do with the landslide?” I’m thinking about the disaster that struck Harrow Lake a century ago. Every blog, vlog, article, and even a documentary about Nightjar included the tragedy as backstory to the movie—about the supposedly cursed ground and how dozens of the townspeople were buried alive. The fans lapped it up when Nightjar came out. It bugged the hell out of Nolan, who has no time for urban legends or curses or whatever.

  “These old eyes aren’t what they were, but I’m quite sure you’re mistaken,” Mr. Bryn says, cutting across my thoughts. “Besides, Carter would never put such a thing up on display.”

  I have no idea who Carter is, but the face is definitely there.

  “How long will you be in town, did you say?” Bryn asks.

  “Only a couple of days,” I say. “I’ll go back as soon as my father is well enough.”

  He grunts. “I hope he recovers quickly.”

  It takes me a moment to figure out he isn’t so much wishing Nolan well as he’s wishing me gone. “Did you meet Nolan when he was here filming Nightjar?”

  “No, I mostly kept out of the way while all that hoopla was going on. There’s plenty of Nightjar crap in this place for you to look at, though, if that’s what you want.” Mr. Bryn turns away, so I almost miss what he says next. “Guess it must be if you’re all gussied up like that.”

  He shuffles back to his seat behind the counter. I have most definitely been dismissed.

  I study my reflection in the glass case. The dim light drains all the color from my face. Would Nolan be pleased that I look so like Little Bird? Or would he only see Lorelei?

  I focus on the sketch again. The pencil lines slash across it, again and again, tracing the image of the lake. I can hear the wisp-wisp of those strokes running over the paper.

  My wrist is exposed where I’ve been rubbing my arms for warmth, and I notice the ink stains are still there. They’re faint, like the lines of the sketch, but it feels as if the ink has sunk into me.

  Blood in the cracks . . .

  I pull my sleeve stiffly back into place. Time to explore the museum and its “Nightjar crap.”

  The building is a series of rooms at odd levels, like it expanded and had extra nooks tacked on as Mr. Bryn ran out of space. And it is so full—walls of glass cabinets and bookshelves turn the place into a maze. I keep going until a narrow corridor opens out into a room with a high ceiling and a mezzanine floor. One wall is covered entirely with framed photographs of Nightjar being filmed around town. I see several shots of Nolan: pointing across a clearing at two lighting techs setting up a rig; holding his arms out wide as he shouts instructions at someone I don’t recognize; crouching by a camera guy as he captures a low-level shot of Lorelei’s feet as she runs through the rain. It’s a tight frame, but I can tell it’s her. I recognize the shoes she wore in the scene. They’re not unlike the ones I’m wearing now.

  “You always put the right shoe on first,” I say to the picture. Right shoe first, then you’ll always put your best foot forward, she used to say. I had completely forgotten that about Lorelei until now.

  “Are you talking to us, or the wall?”

  “What the—” I blurt out. Two girls perch on an antique desk hidden away in the corner. They’re around my age, I think. The one who spoke is pale with wiry black hair cut at chin-level. She’s wearing wool pants, a collarless shirt with suspenders, and scuffed lace-up shoes; I want to call her something cutesy like ragamuffin, but the sharpness in her blue eyes stops me. She’s grinning at me, and I can see her slightly twisted upper canines. It gives her smile a feral edge that’s weirdly appealing.

  She’s more bobcat than ragamuffin, I think. Not that I’d tell her that, either.

  Her friend is a pretty black girl with deep brown eyes and skin, and braided ha
ir held back from her face in a barrette. There’s a pin on her dress that says Easy Diner with FAYE in bold letters underneath. She nudges the Bobcat next to her.

  “You’re the one from New York, aren’t you? Nolan Nox’s daughter,” Bobcat says, swinging her legs back and forth over the edge of the desk. I’ve spent my whole life watching people go wide-eyed and starstruck just saying Nolan’s name, but she doesn’t do that. Maybe that’s why her friend is acting squirrely, though.

  “I’m Lola,” I say, then add, “. . . Nox.” I’m not used to talking to girls my age—or any age, really—and from the way she bites back a smirk, I guess I didn’t quite nail the casual air I was going for. I feel irritated, like I’ve messed up my lines.

  “Uh-huh.” There’s an implied obviously in her tone. “Are you staying in town long?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I guess it depends how quickly your dad gets back on his feet, am I right?” She nods slowly, coaxing me to agree with her. “So, what happened to him, exactly? Were you there?”

  “Cora!” the girl called Faye whispers sharply. But the Bobcat—Cora, apparently—just shrugs.

  “He’s going to be fine,” I say, struggling to sound like the words aren’t choking me. Because I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how Nolan is. I don’t know when he will be allowed back home.

  Is he going to die?

  That’s the question she really wants to ask. It’s what everyone in this town—in the world—must be wondering. I swallow the knot in my throat and cut her a level glare. “I’m sure you’ll find out all the gory details in the news.”

  Cora laughs and holds up her hands. “Sorry, sorry. I’m being a ghoul.” She doesn’t look particularly sorry, but she doesn’t look like she’s trying to be shitty, either. I just get a sense of . . . blunt curiosity, I guess. Her friend looks like she wants to crawl into a hole and die of embarrassment.

  “Cora, we really should get to the diner,” her friend says. “We’ll be late. Again. And Mr. Hadfield is already going to be mad at you for not wearing your uniform. Again.”

  “If he’s already mad, who cares if I’m late?” Cora slides from the desk and thrusts a hand into the space between us. “I’m Cora, by the way.”

  I wait a beat before clasping hands with her briefly.

  “And this is Faye. Faye is too nice to enjoy horror movies, but she was terribly excited when she heard a celebrity was coming to town.” I’m not a celebrity, but I don’t bother to correct her. Cora smiles crookedly when she hears her friend’s exasperated sigh. “And she hates getting into trouble, which really begs the question why she always waits for me when I’m always, always late.”

  “Well, I won’t, then!” Faye snaps, hopping down from the desk. “It was nice meeting you, Lola. Sorry about your dad.” She strides off, tossing over her shoulder, “I’ll tell Mr. Hadfield you have cramps. But this is the last time!”

  Cora turns to me. “I might as well hang out here awhile. Hey, you must have a credit card, right, Lola?” she says, rolling my name around in her mouth like an ice chip. “Wanna do something fun, like hire a limo and go cruising around in it? That’s what folks do in New York, right?”

  “Not really,” I say. I’ve been in limos dozens of times, but there’s no need to tell Cora that.

  “How about a nickel?”

  I let out a startled laugh at the drastic down-shift in her plans. “No. But you won’t get much limo for a nickel anyway.”

  I have my wallet, tucked into a pocket in my skirt next to my phone and one of Lorelei’s beetles, but no change. It was impossible to resist taking a jitterbug after Grandmother got so weird about me touching them.

  “Want to see something strange?” Cora says, gesturing to one of the cabinets. I’m not sure what to make of her yet, but I like that she’s so obviously unimpressed by me—and my father.

  Without waiting for my reply, Cora goes over to the cabinet. It’s not a display inside as I assumed, but an old-fashioned puppet. The details are hard to make out in the dim light, but it looks like the puppet’s neck is broken. It’s a sad-looking thing, trapped there in its cage. Maybe I should let it out.

  “Just as well I know the secret trick,” Cora says, bypassing the nickel slot and hip-checking the side of it—once, twice. Immediately, there’s a distorted wail, and a light flickers on inside. The puppet jerks up on its strings and I gasp. It’s dressed in a miniature pinstripe suit with no features on its painted white face except for black pinprick eyes and a garish mouth that stretches in a grin from ear to ear as though the lips have been cut away. But it’s the limbs that make me edge back. Sticklike, they bend so it sits on its haunches like an animal, its fingers long and sharp like claws.

  I think I’ll leave that thing where it is.

  “What is it supposed to be?”

  “Mister Jitters,” Cora says, then sings, “He got trapped underground for a really long while, then he fed on the dead . . .”

  And got a brand-new smile, I finish silently, then frown. How weird that I know these lyrics. I mean, I do know the song—it was in Nightjar. But these aren’t the words from Little Bird’s song. There was no mention of any Mister Jitters in her version.

  “Your mom changed the words when they put it in the movie,” Cora says.

  I open my mouth to contradict her—I can’t imagine Nolan wanting Lorelei to put her own stamp on his movie—but a sliver of doubt pins my tongue. Lorelei was the star of the film, and not only that: Nolan was falling in love with her. Maybe he did let her carve her name onto some small part of it.

  He’d never let me do that.

  I wince as a sour taste fills my mouth. I’ve bitten the inside of my cheek so hard it’s bleeding.

  Cora has gone back to making the puppet dance. “Do you like him?”

  “Mister Jitters?” This name, too, is oddly familiar. “Why does it look like that?”

  “He got trapped underground . . .”

  “Jesus, forget I asked.”

  Cora smirks as she concentrates on making the puppet dance. She’s very good at it. If I couldn’t see the strings and levers she’s using to make it move, I’d almost believe Mister Jitters was alive.

  “It’s an old song,” she says eventually. “Everything’s old in this town, and everything has a story behind it.” She’s focused on making the puppet prance around inside its cage, her tone distracted. I feel uneasy watching her, like Mister Jitters might lunge at her through the glass. “There are stories about your mom, too, you know.”

  I go still. “What kind of stories?”

  Cora stops noodling with the puppet, and the broken-looking creature falls slack on its strings. The light above it goes out, and the music slows to a drone before stopping completely.

  “About how she caught a monster’s eye,” she says.

  “Is that supposed to be a joke?” I say, a sickly feeling churning up my insides. She better not be talking about Nolan. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d heard some asshole commenting about how much older he is than Lorelei. Like it even matters. She was an adult, too.

  “It’s not a joke, I swear. See, Mister Jitters isn’t just a puppet. He was a guy who lived in a shack in the woods making moonshine during Prohibition. He used to sell it downriver in Drayton—or Drown Town as everyone calls it now, since it got wiped out in a flood. Anyway, Mister Jitters lived alone out in the woods with no family, no friends—kind of an outcast nobody wanted to know unless they were in the market to buy what he was selling, you know? He hid his moonshine in the underground tunnels that run all around the lake, but he got caught in a cave-in when the land shifted in twenty-eight.

  “Mister Jitters was trapped down there, yelling for someone to come dig him out, but nobody did. The folks in town could hear his screams, but they didn’t want to risk any more landslides. Not for him.”
/>   My breath quickens. I can imagine him perfectly—alone in the dark, the air getting thin as he pleads for someone to help him.

  “He kept on hollering for days,” Cora goes on. “They say he was hungry, screaming about how he was trapped with the rotting bodies of other townsfolk who’d been caught in the cave-in. But in the end he went quiet, and everyone assumed he’d died. That was until they finally started hauling up the corpses for burial, and they found big chunks of them were missing. And human teeth marks in what was left.”

  I know this is nonsense and I should tell her so, but I’m a little curious to see how she’s going to try to connect it to Lorelei. I keep my face blank, and Cora picks up her story again with a glint in her eye.

  “Mister Jitters was alive, and still hungry. He’d escaped from the caves, but he’d gotten a taste for human meat, so he started hunting for people to drag back to his lair and eat. Only a few at first. Maybe one every few years. But lately it’s been more and more. Now it seems like only a couple months go by before Mister Jitters comes back out to feed.”

  “Now his hunger makes him shiver and shake,” I say softly. It’s another line from the song, dredged from some dusty part of my memory. I feel like I want to scrape at it; that if I pick away the scab, it’ll be there underneath, raw and real.

  “You’ve heard of him?” Cora seems surprised.

  “No. Yeah, maybe.”

  “From your mom?”

  “I’m not sure.” Maybe I read about him in a Nightjar fan forum or something. I know I’ve heard of Mister Jitters somehow. A long time ago. Could it have been Lorelei who told me?

  “Even if he was real, Mister Jitters would be over a hundred by now. Not exactly a prime candidate for dragging people off and eating them.” I’m pleased by how unbothered I sound, even though I can barely tear my gaze from the puppet.

  “Eating people turned Mister Jitters into a monster,” Cora says, her voice so low I’m not sure whether she really means for me to hear, “but there was already a sickness in this town. That’s why none of our dead folks are buried in Harrow Lake. They won’t admit it, but people here know there’s something rotting inside all of us, and they don’t want that smell to bring Mister Jitters out to feed.”