Unhallowed Ground

by Kristen Gupton

  “Hey, guys. There’s been a family emergency,” Kelly said. “I’ve gotta get Madgie back home. Sorry.”

  There were a few immediate questions and comments, but Kelly didn’t stay to hear them. He went around the counter and into the kitchen.

  Madgie stood toward the back wall unmoving, and Kelly froze in his tracks. There was a grating, raspy noise, and he hesitated. It sounded too much like the sound he’d heard coming from Grace when he’d found her at home a few days prior.

  “M...Madgie?” he asked, knotting his hands up before his stomach.

  She didn’t respond.

  Kelly flicked his gaze toward the ceiling for a second, trying to dig up the nerve to go forward. “Madgie, turn around.”

  She didn’t do so immediately, but when she did, there were no tendrils on her face, and she looked more or less normal.

  The source of the sound was revealed. The massive old Hobart mixer she’d stopped in front of was slowly running, the large whisk inside scraping the interior of the empty steel bowl the machine held.

  Kelly’s legs went weak, relief countering the dump of adrenaline in his blood. “Sorry, but... Ryan just called. Robert Pennick was just found dead in your backyard. We need to go.”

  She slowly blinked, her expression remaining neutral. “I have work to do, Kelly. If he’s dead, there’s nothing I’m going to change about that.”

  One of his brows edged upward. “Madgie, fuck the damn bakery right now! Let’s go! Dani’s freaked out.”

  “Dani should be here, too. Why are they at the house?” She took a step toward him.

  “Because they were looking for you!” Kelly waved a hand back toward the door. “After we saw you in the front yard, she went out to give you a ride here, but you were gone!”

  “I’ve been here,” she said.

  Kelly’s mouth snapped shut. That was the same reply he’d gotten from Grace after finding her following her disappearance.

  “Madgie, I literally just watched you get here and walk in the door.” His arms hung limp at his sides, acid churning in his stomach. “You have not been here.”

  She stared at him, her expression unchanging.

  He didn’t know what to do. The sting of fear-induced sweat broke across his skin despite the cold. Kelly took a step backward, bumping into a counter.

  “I’m going to leave. Either follow me to the truck or don’t.” Kelly shuffled along the counter, unwilling to turn his back toward her until he’d gotten out of the kitchen.

  He moved quickly out the front door, reaching over and flipping the open sign to closed as he went. The few customers who’d been there had cleared out, thankfully.

  Kelly pulled his keys out and went to the truck before getting in. He debated simply driving away and leaving Madgie to do whatever it was she was going to do, but his conscience wouldn’t let him.

  He fired up the engine and sat idling, wondering how long he should give her to make up her mind. On the other hand, he didn’t really want her in the truck at all.

  Still, he waited.

  Madgie came shuffling out of the bakery a few moments later. Kelly got out of the truck to wave her over, opening the door for her.

  She didn’t say anything to him, grunting and climbing into the passenger seat.

  Kelly looked back at the bakery. “Did you lock the door?”

  She stared at him. “Didn’t I?”

  “I didn’t see you do it,” he said.

  Madgie lifted up her right hand, the keys held in it.

  He took them from her and went back to lock the door. That done, he returned to the truck, though he had to talk himself into getting into it with her. When he mustered the courage, he passed her keys back and quickly got them on the road.

  As they went, Kelly kept looking over at her. Madgie’s gaze was fixed forward out the windshield.

  “Where’s your coat?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Madgie, why did you walk to work without your coat when it’s below freezing?”

  Her head slowly turned toward him, and she offered a slow blink. “I must’ve forgotten it.”

  He considered her for a moment before putting his eyes on the road again. “Did you know Robert was in your backyard? You’re acting weird.”

  She offered a noncommittal shrug.

  “Goddamn it,” he grumbled, deciding to put his full attention into driving. Madgie was giving him the full-on jibblies, and he didn’t like it.

  He pulled up and came to a stop on the side of the street opposite Madgie’s house. Getting any closer wasn’t an option. Emergency vehicles filled the curb and driveway.

  Kelly pulled the keys from the ignition and popped open his door, but Madgie didn’t make any effort to move.

  “Come on,” he said, standing up.

  There was a delay, but she finally moved and got out of the truck.

  Kelly waited for her to get beside him before he started for the house.

  Dani stood in the yard talking to Dennis. When she saw Madgie coming, she broke off her conversation and ran to the old woman, throwing her arms around her.

  Kelly stood back, Ryan soon moving to his side.

  “After we found Robert, she was freaked out he’d killed Madgie,” Ryan said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  Madgie weakly returned Dani’s embrace for a moment, but her arms soon went slack at her sides.

  Dani looked over at Kelly with tears in her eyes. “Thanks for bringing her. I owe you ice cream for sure after getting her home.”

  Kelly forced up a smile for her. “Glad to do it.”

  Dani turned back to her grandma and looked up at her. “Are you all right? Where have you been?”

  “At the bakery,” she replied.

  “We looked there for you!” Dani said, motioning toward Ryan. “You’ve been missing for at least two hours!”

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Madgie replied, casting a quick glance at Kelly.

  Dennis came over, looking exhausted. While they’d sent in another deputy to give him some relief, he’d shown up anyway as it involved his family.

  “Grandma, do you have any idea what happened?” he asked, stopping at Dani’s side.

  She gave a slow shake of her head. “I left early and walked to the bakery since my car is gone. There was nothing out of the ordinary when I left that I noticed.”

  “Was the power on when you left?” Deputy Bryant asked.

  Madgie scowled and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, no. It’s been off since last night.”

  “Would you have noticed anything amiss in the kitchen?” he asked. “Robert bled all over the place, and it doesn’t look like it happened this morning. Coroner says he’s been dead since last night.”

  Madgie shrugged. “I didn’t see anything. I came home last night, went to bed, got up this morning and left.”

  Dennis looked down at Dani for a moment and frowned before turning his attention back to Madgie. “You don’t seem particularly distressed about this. Given how you’ve been overreacting to things lately...”

  “Are you implying that I somehow killed this Robert fellow?” she asked, her tone growing sharp.

  “He looks to have died of the wounds he’d sustained earlier. There’s a pile of surgical staples in the kitchen from where he sat and pulled them all out of his stomach,” Dennis said.

  Another jolt ran down Kelly’s spine, forcing him to turn away from the conversation.

  Ryan switched his gaze between everyone before he turned and went to follow Kelly.

  “Kel? Are you okay?” he asked.

  Kelly continued to move away from the others. “No.”

  “What’d she say on the way over here?” Ryan asked.

  Kelly shook his head. “Not much, but she’s acting weird. Just like Grace did, and now to hear that Robert opened himself up... What did he look like?”

  Ryan sighed. “Honestly, I didn’t look too close. He was face down in the sno
w naked. It was pretty obvious he was dead, and I didn’t touch him. Last thing I want to do is make myself a suspect in any of this. Kitchen is a bloody mess, though. We thought for sure he’d killed Madgie until you found her.”

  Kelly stopped walking and turned to face Ryan, but he didn’t say anything. After his small breakdown earlier worrying about his sanity, he didn’t know how much he should or shouldn’t say.

  Ryan stepped closer, seeing the odd expression Kelly wore and the way his complexion suddenly paled. “You’re really freaked out, aren’t you? Geez, it’s not like you found the guy dead.”

  Kelly met his friend’s gaze, trying to push back the burn he felt returning to his eyes. “Shouldn’t I be freaked out? Aren’t you?”

  Ryan looked away again, seeing that Dani, Madgie, and Dennis were still talking and paying them no attention. “Honestly? I am. I damn near had to give up and go to the hospital after I found Robert’s body. Freaked me out and put me into a good attack.”

  “I don’t want to be around Madgie,” Kelly confessed. “Even getting into the truck with her to bring her here was... It took everything I had, Ryan. I tried talking to her on the way, but she’s messed up. She even told me she’d been at the bakery all morning, even though I watched her arrive right before I talked to you.”

  Ryan reached up and adjusted his knit cap, blowing out a long breath. “Kinda like how Grace was AWOL all night and morning but then claimed to have been home the whole time, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit.” Ryan ran his hands down his face. “I don’t think I want to leave Dani alone with Madgie. I know we’re probably still just way off and being paranoid, but...”

  “You saw her out in my front yard this morning,” Kelly said poking Ryan in the middle of the chest. “You know we’re not just being paranoid.”

  Ryan screwed up his face and looked back at the others again. “There’s more to it. There were footprints in the blood on the kitchen floor and down the stairs to the back yard, then back into the house again. Like hell she didn’t know it was there, lights out or not.”

  Kelly gave a small nod. “Dennis saw that, too, right?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. He pointed it out to me, actually. Unless someone else was around, but... I don’t want to be around Madgie, either, but like hell I’m gonna leave Dani with her. I hate to do this to you, but can you take the parts to dad?”

  Getting away from Madgie wasn’t something Kelly was about to object to. “I’ll do it. Maybe I can go out with him and start to get the machines put together. Get my mind off of all...this.”

  “I doubt Dani will be willing to leave Madgie’s side for now,” Ryan said, his shoulders rounding. “If I can convince her to do so, maybe we’ll come out to the job site for a while. I’ll call dad and tell him what’s up. I’ve never seen anything like I did this morning, and I know he’ll give me shit about it. I nearly pissed myself.”

  “Well, if the cold’s gonna make your asthma worse, maybe it’s best you stay in.” Kelly pulled the keys out of his pocket. “You still sound hoarse.”

  “I think not seeing anything else that scares the shit out of me will help more with preventing another asthma attack,” Ryan said. “Call in a little while. Let me know if you’re at the site or home or whatever.”

  Chapter

  47

  Kelly pulled up before the McKessel’s house, finding the garage open despite the cold. He got out of the truck and walked up the driveway, finding Henry inside.

  The older man wiped his hands off on a rag, greasy from toying with his broken snowblower. “Kel, thanks for getting this over here. Did Ryan tell you everything?”

  Kelly sighed. “Yeah, he filled me in. I actually went over to Madgie’s house and saw him for a few minutes.”

  “Poor damned kid. I know you guys had no love lost for Robert, but still. But, maybe this will patch things up between Madgie and Dani. Make them see some sort of bigger picture or something. I don’t mind having Dani around here, but I know she’s been stressed with things between her and her grandma like they were,” Henry said, shaking his head and moving out of the garage toward the truck. “How’d Ryan handle finding Robert like that? I know he was probably a lot more honest with how it made him feel to you than he would have been to me. Ryan doesn’t have the stomach for that kinda thing. It didn’t send him into an attack, did it?”

  Kelly followed along, deciding to keep Ryan’s asthma problems under wraps. “It bugged him, but he seemed okay when I was there.”

  “I’ll call him in a while. I’d like to go over and check on him, but I’m sure there’s still a lot of activity over there. I bet this bothers him for a while. I don’t think he handles shit as well as you seem to. Man, rough couple of days, huh?” Henry stopped behind the truck and lowered the tailgate. “How’re you doing with things? I know you’ve been through the wringer.”

  Kelly looked down the street, doing his best to put up a brave front he wasn’t feeling. “I’ll get through it. I’m not sure I’m all that much tougher than Ryan, though.”

  Henry climbed up into the bed. He untied the tarp covering the pallet of parts and looked it over, doing a quick inventory of what he knew they needed.

  “You’re a good kid, Kel. Thanks for bringing this over for Ryan,” Henry said, satisfied.

  Kelly stepped back as Henry climbed out of the truck bed. “Glad to do it. I’m free for the day, so if you want to go out to work on the machines, I’d go with you. I’m sure Ryan will probably stick pretty close to Dani today.”

  Henry considered him for a moment before giving a pleased smile. “Well, I know my mechanic can’t come out until tomorrow, but there’s a lot the two of us can certainly get done. You’ve changed a belt or two in your day, right?”

  Kelly smiled. “My mechanic resume might not be very long, but that I can do.”

  “Good, good.” Henry turned back toward the house and waved for Kelly to follow. “First, though, it’s breakfast time. Clara made pancakes. You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

  Though he’d not been hungry given what had taken place, he wasn’t about to turn down pancakes. “Actually, that sounds good.”

  Clara was more than happy to see Kelly. By the time he had washed up and got to the breakfast table, a plate was already waiting for him. No one ever went hungry at the McKessels’ house.

  With his stomach full, life felt a little more normal, even if it was only temporary. Kelly rode along in the truck as Henry took them to the worksite. While it was still cold, the sun had broken through the chronic gray pall in the sky, getting the ice off the road. Without any wind, it was far more bearable outside than it had been for several days.

  They unloaded the boxes and parts from the bed of the pickup and stacked them on the back of the flatbed truck left at the site. That was enough physical activity to get Kelly to shed his winter coat. He went across the road to the backhoe and retrieved his lighter flannel jacket from the cab. It was oily and dirty from working anyway, and he wouldn’t care if it got more so in the course of the day.

  They focused on the small loader first, knowing it would be the most useful for clearing away the snow from the worksite. Unfortunately, said machine had been the easiest one for the vandals to access, and it had suffered the most damage.

  Within a few hours, and with plenty of cursing from Henry as he repeatedly bashed his knuckles, they’d made progress. The coolant hoses and belts were replaced as well as the exhaust boots that had gotten sliced.

  Henry decided it was time for a break, and he wandered a short distance away as Kelly rechecked the tightness of the clamps to the hoses and boots. Henry leaned against the side of the pickup truck and lit up a cigarette before pulling out his phone.

  Though Kelly didn’t intentionally try to listen in, given the cold and relative quiet, he heard Henry’s side of the conversation clearly enough.

  “Ryan, how are you doing? Your mom is freaked out,” Henry said. “I told her not t
o bother you, I figured the cops would still be there. Yeah, I knew she’d do so the second I left anyway.”

  Kelly peeked over the engine of the loader at Henry for a moment, the older man taking a long drag off his cigarette and nodding as Ryan went on about something.

  “Well, it’s a shame. I know you didn’t give a damn about Robert, but his old lady’ll take it rough,” Henry said. “No, no, I don’t want to know the gory details like that. I got the gist of it.”

  Kelly vanished behind the engine again. He’d finished everything he could reach on that side of the machine, but he wanted to at least offer Henry the illusion of privacy.

  “We’re out at the site getting some of the repairs started. Yeah, Kelly and me. Seemed like he needed something to keep occupied, you know?” Henry flicked the rest of his cigarette off into the snow. “Poor fella. Anyway, I think I might drag him back into town for some lunch. The wiring harness on this loader shouldn’t be too hard for us to muddle through replacing. Anyway, yeah. If you guys get bored, you know where to find us, though I’d imagine you and Dani want to stick by Madgie.”

  Kelly went through the motions of checking the tension on the belts one more time before he slowly crept around to the other side of the engine. He did his best to pretend he was ignoring the conversation.

  Henry glanced at Kelly and turned around to face away from the younger man without thinking about it. “Yeah? That’s weird. Look, I know she’s probably got no interest in coming out here, but if it gets to be too much, you come on out here. What? Naw, he seems okay. Maybe a little tired, but he volunteered to come out here and help, I didn’t have to ask. Okay. All right. Bye.”

  Kelly lowered the socket wrench in his hand and set it on one of the loader’s massive tires before facing Henry. “Is he doing all right?”

  Henry came closer, shoving his phone back in a pocket. “Yeah. Sherriff himself came out to have a look at things. I guess Dennis has really been run ragged lately. They finally all left, but Ryan...”

  “Ryan what?” Kelly asked, closing the remaining distance between them.