by Willow Rose
“Wait for what?” I asked, thinking this was the strangest child I had ever met. In the light from the diner, she looked so pale I couldn’t believe it. Her skin was almost see-through, like paper, and I could see all the veins underneath it. She looked suddenly a lot younger than I had initially thought she was. It was just that the way she spoke and acted made her seem older.
“Maybe you’re used to saying a prayer before you eat?” Shannon asked. “We always did that at my house.”
“Nope. Never at my house,” I said. “But we can say one if you like. Would you like that?”
The girl nodded. We closed our eyes and held hands while Shannon led us all in the prayer she grew up with.
“Amen,” she ended.
When I opened my eyes, I realized Betsy Sue hadn’t closed hers at all. She was staring at us.
“No prayer?” I asked. “Then what do you usually wait for before you can eat at your house?”
Betsy Sue’s eyes met mine as I sipped my coffee. There was something in them, something in that look that caused a chill to run down my back. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was really wrong with this little girl.
“The ghosts.”
I almost choked on my coffee and some of it spurted out. I wiped it off from the table with my napkin. “I’m sorry.”
“Did you say ghosts?” Shannon asked.
The girl nodded.
“You have to wait for the ghosts to do what?”
“To sit with us,” she answered. “Once they’re there, we can all eat.”
I took another sip of my coffee, then said, “Well let’s just say the ghosts are here right now, sitting at the end of the table so you can eat, alright?”
The girl shrugged. “Okay.” Then she finally picked up her burger and took a bite. She never put it down again. Soon she was eating so fast I was beginning to worry she might choke.
“You sure were hungry,” I said, as the burger disappeared, and soon after the fries went the same way. “So, tell me. What were you doing at the harbor?”
The girl swallowed a bite. “Looking at the water.”
“Yes, I know you were looking out over the water, but were you waiting for someone? Why were you there?”
“I wanted to see the ocean.”
“Yeah, all right, but I mean…you have seen the ocean before, right?”
The girl shook her head with food in her mouth. I had never seen a little girl devour a burger and fries that fast. Not even my own twins. They usually made it a little more than half way, and then gave up. I was beginning to wonder when this little girl had eaten last.
“How can you never have seen the ocean when you live in Savannah?” I asked.
The girl shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe she’s not from here after all; maybe she’s just visiting,” Shannon said, then addressed Betsy Sue again. “Did you come here by car or airplane?”
The girl stared at Shannon like she had no clue what she was talking about.
“I don’t know.”
Could she be mentally challenged? I started to wonder. Maybe she had run off from some institution somewhere. There was something in the way she spoke, like she had a speech impairment as well.
“What do you want to do?” Shannon asked, as we paid for the food and my coffee.
“It’s late,” I said, while putting down a tip. “Let’s take her back to our place, then I’ll make some calls to my colleagues around here and ask if anyone is missing a little girl. We’ve got to find out where she came from.”
10
September 1990
It took Joseph only two interviews before he landed a job as a music teacher at a local school in Savannah, a dream position for him, as it gave him the time to pursue his own music and teach young kids about his big passion at the same time.
For so many years he had struggled as a musician, doing gigs here and there in bars and restaurants or at festivals, but never really making ends meet. With this job, he was finally able to provide stability for his family, and Kimberly could stay home and not work anymore.
It was perfect.
Meanwhile, Kimberly had a lot to do, taking care of this new big house. She decided to homeschool Rosa, as she herself had always been homeschooled. Rosa loved being at home all day and having extra time with her mother. As soon as she was done with her assignments and classes for the day, she would go into the back yard and play or on rainy days like today, she would go to the attic and play.
“Don’t get your dress dirty,” Kimberly yelled after her, but the girl was already long gone. Why she loved that attic so much, Kimberly never understood, but she could spend hours on end up there.
Meanwhile, Kimberly did the laundry. She walked to the basement with the big full basket under her arm. She divided the clothes into colors and whites, then put the first load in and started it. The old machine made a loud noise and drowned out everything.
Kimberly whistled as she walked up the stairs to check on her bread baking in the oven. The kitchen smelled divine and she took it out, burning her finger as it slipped when she put it down.
“Ouch.”
Kimberly blew on her finger, and then went to the sink to run water on it. She was holding it under the faucet when she heard a sound and turned to realize a raven had found its way inside the kitchen. There were so many of them all over the property, and they had even made a nest in the attic, which she had asked Joseph to remove a thousand times.
“Shoo!” she yelled, still holding her finger under the cold water. The bird didn’t react. It flew up on the kitchen counter and sat there, then made a gurgling croak while staring at her bread. The sound was rising in pitch and soon it became very loud.
“Shoo!” Kimberly yelled again, but the bird didn’t react. It started to pick at her bread.
“STOP!”
The bird picked and destroyed the newly baked loaf of bread in a matter of seconds, crumbs flying everywhere. Kimberly picked up a wooden spoon and threw it at the bird. Finally it moved, but it didn’t fly away. Instead, it flew towards her very fast and grabbed her hair between its claws, then pulled it violently.
“Ouch! You bastard!”
Kimberly pulled her finger out of the water and grabbed a kitchen knife.
“CR-R-R-UCK, CR-R-R-UCK, CR-R-R-RUCK,” the bird screamed and flew up under the ceiling, while the knife missed it, but cut off a huge lump of Kimberly’s hair, which fell to the ground.
Kimberly gasped and picked up her long hair between her hands, then looked at herself in the mirror.
“My beautiful hair,” she sobbed, when she realized she had lost all the hair on the right side of her head. Now she’d have to cut off the other side as well to make it even.
Meanwhile, the bird sat under the ceiling, croaking. Kimberly groaned in anger, yelled at it, then picked up a broom and tried to reach it. The bird took off, flying under the high ceiling towards the front door, croaking loudly, sounding exactly like it was laughing at her.
Like it was mocking her.
11
May 2016
“We can’t just keep her here!”
Shannon was angry. She looked at Jack, who had been on the phone for at least an hour, talking to his colleagues at the nearest police station, but no girl had been reported missing, they told him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “They don’t have anywhere better for her to spend the night. Besides, she’s already sleeping. We’ll take her down to the station tomorrow and they’ll call DCF. For now, she’s fine.”
Shannon bit her nails. She didn’t like it. Ever since Jack went over to that little girl at the docks, she’d had this sensation, this feeling of dread inside her stomach that she couldn’t escape.
Jack got up from his chair and walked to her. He grabbed her face between his hands and kissed her.
“It’ll be fine,” he whispered. “We’re doing something good here. She would still be out there if we hadn’t taken care
of her. God only knows who she would run into down there or on the streets. We helped her. We’re the good guys, remember?”
Shannon eased up. She needed to trust Jack more, she knew that. It was an issue she was working on. Trust. It sounded so easy. Just a five-letter word. Still, it was the hardest thing for her to do. To trust another human being, especially a man. She hadn’t exactly had much luck doing so earlier in life.
“I know.”
“Now, Sarah has gone to her room, all the kids are asleep, and I mean all of them, even Tyler; do you know what that means?”
“We’re alone,” Shannon said.
“Exactly.”
Jack leaned over and kissed her neck. He continued down to her shoulder, where he pulled off her shirt, talking in-between kisses. “So…Shannon King…soon to be Mrs. Ryder…what…do…you…say to…the two of us…making all…the love…tonight?”
Shannon giggled and closed her eyes. It felt good to feel his lips on her body again. It had been so long. She leaned her head back. Jack stopped. “Wait, you’re not too tired are you? I don’t want to pressure…”
He didn’t get to finish. She grabbed him by the neck and pulled him towards her, and soon after they both tumbled towards the couch where they made love. All the love, like they always called it. It was taken from some movie, neither of them could remember which one. It might also have been a cartoon. Shannon never knew these crazy days anymore. But she did know that she loved Jack. She loved him and the family they were building together. She loved her life more than ever before.
“So, what do you think is with this girl?” Jack asked when they were done and were lying on the couch of the rental house.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s strange, don’t you think?”
Shannon nodded. “Sure do.”
“I mean, show me one kid in this country that doesn’t know if they like a burger or not, or even what flavor soda they like.”
Shannon laughed lightly. “That is really odd, yes.”
“And that story of the ghost?” Jack asked, while putting his pants back on. He left his shirt off, since they were going upstairs to bed in a few minutes anyway. “And she kept talking about the Doctor, like this doctor was her parent or something. I think she ran away from an institution around here. I mean, that is the only explanation, right?”
Shannon yawned. She was seeing dots in front of her eyes now. It was past midnight. She hadn’t been up this late since she became pregnant. Tyler had been sleeping all evening, Sarah said, so there was a really good probability that he was going to wake up very soon and ask to be fed.
“Sure.”
And there it was. The sound of Tyler crying on the monitor. On the screen, she could see that he was wide awake. Shannon’s eyes met Jack’s.
“Oh, no, “she said.
Jack shrugged. “Better now than after you’ve fallen sleep, right? Maybe if you feed him now, you’ll get to sleep afterwards.”
Easy for you to say when it’s not you who has to get up at night.
Shannon got up with a growl and went up the stairs. While she was walking up, she realized that Tyler had suddenly stopped crying. Puzzled, Shannon opened the door to his room anyway. Inside, she spotted Betsy Sue. She was standing by the crib, leaning over it. Shannon gasped and the girl turned her head, then smiled. That was when Shannon realized the girl had put her finger into the baby’s mouth and Tyler was eagerly sucking on it.
“I used to do this to Miss Muffit all the time,” she said, her light blue eyes staring at Shannon from her ghostly pale face. “It always calmed her down.”
12
May 2016
Two officers came to the house the next morning. I had spent hours the night before trying to calm Shannon down after she walked in on Betsy Sue. Shannon insisted that one of us stay in the nursery to make sure the girl didn’t go in there again. I thought she was freaking out for no reason, but that wasn’t what she needed to hear.
“This girl is creepy,” she kept telling me. “I don’t trust her. I tried to be nice; I tried to embrace her, but this…this is awful what she did, Jack.”
“She probably didn’t know any better,” I tried to defend her. “Apparently, she was used to doing it to her sister, and that used to make her stop crying, so she believed that it was okay. Cut her some slack.”
But it didn’t help. Shannon had decided the girl was sick or a weirdo and that she was not to be trusted. So I ended up sleeping in a chair in the nursery.
When the officers arrived, I hadn’t even showered, and I felt like someone had run a truck over me.
The two officers, a man and a woman, showed me their badges. “Are you Detective Ryder?”
I nodded and let them inside. I straightened my hair with my hand and tucked my shirt in my trousers. Tyler was crying upstairs. Shannon was with him.
“Just give me a second, will you?” I asked them and walked into the kitchen where all the kids were eating cereal with Sarah. Betsy Sue was sitting with them at the breakfast counter, staring at her cereal bowl like was it the Holy Grail. Abigail and Austin were fighting over a spoon, and Angela was chatting about her being a flower girl at the wedding to Sarah, and explaining how she was going to throw the rose petals.
Betsy Sue seemed awkward as she sat there all quiet and pale. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought she had never seen other children before, but of course she had. As far as I knew, she at least had a sister, but maybe the children she had known hadn’t been as vocal and rowdy as our kids. She didn’t seem uncomfortable with it, though. It seemed to amuse her.
“Could you take them to the park afterwards?” I asked Sarah pleadingly. “We need to figure out what is going to happen to Betsy Sue.”
Sarah nodded. Abigail and Austin yelled in happiness.
“Yay, the park!”
Abigail looked at Betsy Sue. “I’m sorry you can’t come with us,” she said. “Maybe next time?”
I didn’t see Emily anywhere and assumed she was still sleeping, teenager as she was.
I turned and looked at Betsy Sue, then smiled. “There are some people here to see you.”
Betsy Sue followed me to the living room where the two officers were waiting patiently. I asked them if they wanted coffee, but they refused. They presented themselves as Detective Bellini and Detective Nelson from the Special Victims Unit. I explained to them really quickly how I had found Betsy Sue by the water, sitting on the seawall at the harbor, her feet dangling dangerously from the edge and told them that I was worried about leaving her so late on the streets. They both nodded while listening. The female detective, Bellini wrote down what I told them.
“So far, all I’ve gotten out of her is that she is from Savannah and that she has a sister called Miss Muffit, I don’t know what kind of name that is, but I’m thinking it must be some kind of nickname or something. But, then again, I don’t know if it’s her sister or not, I just know that she knew her as a baby. She might have run away from some institution or something. She told me she has no parents and apparently she has lived with a doctor.”
Detective Bellini nodded again and wrote it down, then looked up at me. I sniffled, my eyes darting between the officers.
“We haven’t had anyone report this girl missing, and we’ve reached out to all institutions and foster homes in the nearby area this morning, but no one seems to be missing a girl,” Bellini said. She lifted her hand and touched her hair, showing off a very big ring on her finger with a heavy green stone.
“That’s strange,” I said.
“If you don’t mind, we’d like to talk to her ourselves a little bit,” Detective Bellini said.
“Of course not,” I said and got up. “I’ll go check on the baby and his mother while you do.”
13
May 2016
“She won’t talk to us.”
Detective Bellini had come upstairs where Shannon and I were sitting while she was breastfeeding. She knocked o
n the door and peeked inside.
“Excuse me?” I said and got up.
The detective shook her head. “She refuses to say anything. You say that she spoke to you two last night?”
“Yes,” Shannon said. “She spoke to us a lot, even.”
I looked at Shannon. “She spoke to you mostly. She likes you.”
“We can’t seem to get through to her. We called DCF and they will send someone over. It might take a little while, though, since it’s Sunday and all. And I don’t want to take her to the station. It might be too much for her right now. She seems quite shocked. And you don’t know what happened to her before she came here?”
“No clue.”
“I’ve called the station and they they’re going to be knocking on doors. Maybe her parents simply slept in and haven’t discovered that she’s gone yet. But is it okay if she stays here at your house till someone from DCF arrives? It shouldn’t be more than an hour or so.”
I looked at Shannon and could tell she wanted to get the girl out as soon as possible. I decided her needs were more important now. “Maybe we should…”
“Of course she can stay,” Shannon interrupted me.
I smiled, relieved.
“What?” Shannon asked me when Detective Bellini had left us. “I’m not a monster. Besides, it’s just a for a few hours, right?”
I chortled. “I didn’t think you were.” I leaned over her and kissed her gently, then leaned down and kissed Tyler.
“Careful not to wake him up,” she whispered. “He finally fell asleep.”
“He looks so peaceful when he’s asleep,” I said.
“I know. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”
I laughed lightly, then sneaked out and went down the stairs where a woman from DCF had already arrived. She had pulled up a chair next to Betsy Sue. The girl wasn’t looking at her, but simply staring at her feet.