by S. E. Green
Table of Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY- SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Copyright © S.E. GREEN 2017
This edition published in 2017 by
O F T O M E S P U B L I S H I N G
U N I T E D K I N G D O M
The right of S.E. GREEN to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover & Interior Book Design by Eight Little Pages
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY- SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“HELP!”
Glancing up from my magazine, I turn my head toward the woods that border our property. I stop the porch swing from swaying and I listen . . . but I hear only the sound of Mom’s music floating through the open screen windows.
I glance down to the pond where my younger brother, Kevin, sits. But he’s fine, fishing pole in hand, staring idly at the calm water—just like he’s been for the past hour.
“Help!”
I lunge to my feet. That’s Travis!
“HELP! SOMEONE!”
I fly down the porch steps, and my bare feet hit the wet morning grass as I take off in a full sprint toward the woods. “Travis!”
My twin brother emerges from the line of pine trees that separate our property from our grandfather’s goat farm.
“Vickie!” Travis screams, hurling himself across our lawn.
Blood is the first thing I see, covering the front of his white V-neck tee and down across his yellow swim trunks. Then his eyes—wild, crazy, and so full of fear that everything within me clenches.
“Mom!” I yell as I keep running toward my brother. “Dad! Uncle Jerry!”
There’s so much blood, but I don’t think he’s hurt, at least not hurt bad because he’s running like he’s okay. We both enter the vegetable garden from opposite ends and seconds later we collide in the middle of the green beans. Sobbing, he falls to his knees.
Behind me I hear my parents yelling, racing toward us. I hear Uncle Jerry. “Travis?” I search his face, his body, trying to run my hands across him to see where or if he’s hurt. “What is it? Talk to me.”
He grips my arms so hard I grimace, and his hazel, tear filled eyes lock onto mine. “In the woods. She—she’s dead.”
“WE NEED EACH of you to stay right here,” the first cop on the scene instructs. “On this porch. Do not move.”
Beside me Travis is shaking, and I go to wrap my arm around him—
“Don’t touch him,” a woman dressed in black pants and a white shirt firmly tells me as she comes up the steps carrying a metal case. She puts it down and flips it open and takes out a large Ziploc bag. “You need to strip and put your clothes in here.” She looks at my mom. “Go inside and get him something to wear.”
Travis takes his bloody clothes off and stuffs them inside of the bag. The woman grabs a thin metal scraper, and with gloves on, she takes each of my brother’s hands and runs it under his nails, dislodging dried blood and dirt into another smaller Ziploc bag. After that she takes a magnifying glass and tweezers and slowly circles Travis, studying his body. I watch him standing there in his underwear, still shaking, wishing I could hug him. I’ve never seen him look so scared.
“Open,” she says and starts to run an oversized Q-tip inside of his mouth.
“Wait,” Dad intercedes. “What are you doing?”
“Collecting his DNA,” she calmly responds. “We can do it now, or we can do it with a lawyer, or hell, we’ll get a court order if need be. Good thing about DNA is that it’s always there.”
“A court order?” Dad looks first to Uncle Jerry, and they both turn to watch Mom coming back out of the house carrying Travis’s clean clothes. “They want his DNA,” Dad tells her.
“What?” Mom turns worried eyes on the lady. “Why do you need his DNA? Are you accusing him of something? Do we need a lawyer?
“Its standard procedure, Ma’am. Like I told your husband we can do it now or later. But one way or another we will get his DNA.”
Mom and Dad exchange a silent look and then Dad says, “No, go ahead. We have nothing to hide. We will fully cooperate.”
The lady swabs Travis’s cheek and after slipping the Q-tip inside of a plastic container says, “Okay, you can get dressed. Detective Crandall will be here shortly.”
ME AND KEVIN and Uncle Jerry sit side-by-side on kitchen bar stools as we peer out into the living room, listening to the interview going on. It’s been over an hour now with Detective Crandall and the questions. I’m exhausted, and I’m not even the one being queried.
Travis sits on one of our leather sofas with Mom on one side and Dad on the other. Mom looks shell-shocked, Travis drained, and Dad studious as they all stare across the coffee table at Detective Crandall who is perched on the edge of the other sofa. He has a small spiral notebook and pen in hand and looks like what I imagined a detective would look like: black suit, thinning hair, stern face.
The waffles and bacon Mom was making when I first heard Travis’s call for help sit cold and untouched on the counter in front of me. While I stare at them, I hear Kevin sigh.
“Why is he repeating the questions?” he whispers.
“That’s what they do when they’re trying to catch someone in a lie,” Uncle Jerry tells him, and I feel a spurt of irritation that they think my brother might be lying.
The detective speaks again: “What were you doing in the woods?”
Travis: “Coming back from PaPaw’s.”
Detective: “And that is your grandfather?”
Travis: “Yes.”
Detective: “How do you kno
w the victim?”
Travis: “She’s our neighbor’s daughter, Michelle.”
Detective: “Do you know how old she is?”
Travis: “I think four.”
Detective: “Why was her blood on you?”
Travis: “I already told you. I didn’t know if she was alive. I pulled . . .” He swallows. “I pulled her from the goat’s body.”
This is where I tune out as Travis describes again how he found Michelle—naked, throat sliced, and stuffed inside of one of PaPaw’s goat’s gutted belly. It’s too horrible to listen, to imagine. Little Michelle . . . a wave of despair washes over me as I picture her tiny face, giggling at the pig noises I used to make just because I knew she liked them.
“Okay,” Detective Crandall says, standing. “I’ll be in touch. Our team will be in your woods for quite some time yet, so please bear with us.”
My father walks Crandall out, and after he closes the door, he quietly turns and looks at each of us. He doesn’t say anything, he just looks. And for the first time in my life I see true fear in my dad’s eyes.
I’VE ALWAYS BEEN an average, ordinary girl, born to an equally ordinary family. Mom is an elementary teacher, and Dad and Uncle Jerry are partners in a home improvement business. I go to church once a week at First Baptist. I run track. PaPaw used to be a child psychiatrist and now he’s retired and enjoying his goat farm that I help with when I get a chance. Aside from my numerous freckles, there is nothing unique about me.
Yes, average and ordinary . . . until now.
Travis pulls his old Chevy truck into the student parking lot at County High. It’s Monday morning, just twenty four hours since Michelle was found in our woods.
“You okay?” I ask Travis. “Because Dad was right. We don’t have to be here today.” When Dad told us that this morning, I was completely on board with the idea, but both of my brothers wanted to come, so here we are.
“It’s better than being at home,” Kevin mumbles before wedging open the passenger door and heading across the rows of vehicles to join a few of his ninth grade friends.
Travis doesn’t respond at all. He simply turns the ignition off, opens his own door, and is out and walking toward the student entrance, leaving me sitting in the center of the bench seat alone. Of the three of us kids, he is usually the most talkative. Perhaps that’s why his complete and utter silence unsettles me so.
“Hey, you coming in or what?”
I glance up to see Honey, Travis’s girlfriend, smiling at me through the open door. I like Honey, always have. Everything about her is sweet—her name, her smile, her personality. She and Travis have been together since we were all freshmen. They are “the” couple. So in love.
She gives Travis’s retreating back a quick glance. “He called me last night and told me all about it.”
“Did he? Good. Because he hasn’t said a word to me. To any of us.” I slide across the seat and jump down, and together, we start across the parking lot.
“How’s your family doing?” she asks.
“Awful. Dad was up all night sitting on our porch with a shot gun. Mom was nervously pacing. Kevin and Travis were in their rooms. I was in mine. All of us are just scared, I guess. I mean, my God, whoever killed Michelle is out there, you know?”
Honey shakes her head. “That poor little girl.”
“I know,” I whisper as morbid thoughts start to swirl in my head again. “I hate that Travis found her.”
She squeezes my arm. “Me, too. Just be there for him. That’s all any of us can do.”
I open the door to the student entrance and to a hallway crammed with people. No one says a word as everyone stands, all eyes upward to the flat screen monitor that has local news playing. Honey and I wedge our way in and turn to see what is holding everyone’s attention. It’s footage of our property, and the words along the bottom read:
LOCAL GIRL MURDERED IN POSSIBLE SATANIC RITUAL
ALL DAY LONG students and teachers are coming up, asking questions and expressing their sorrow. I don’t know what to say to any of it, so I just do the best I can and I wonder how Kevin and Travis are handling it all.
The school counselors announce they are available for anyone who wants to talk. The principal cancels all after school activities, urging us to stay indoors and keep safe until the police find the killer. The worst part, though, are all the stares and whispers as everyone wonders what exactly my brother saw, why our property, and who in our small East Tennessee town worships Satan.
We—and Michelle’s death—are all anyone is talking about.
When the last bell finally rings, I can’t get to Travis’s truck fast enough. Kevin is already inside waiting, and when I approach he shoots me a desperate look. “We should’ve just stayed home,” he says.
With a sigh, I open the driver’s door and slide in. “I agree.”
Travis is right behind him, hurrying across the lot. He swings inside and cranks the engine. “Some idiot asked me if Michelle’s head had been cut off.”
“What?” I gasp. “That’s awful!”
Travis grinds the truck into reverse. “Screw this. I’m not coming to school tomorrow. I can’t deal with their morbid curiosity.”
“Me neither,” Kevin says. “I’m not coming.”
“Then I’m sure not.” It’s the last week before summer. With everything happening, Dad and Mom won’t care.
Travis drives from the student lot and past the nearby hospital, through the tiny historical downtown area, and out into the country. We hang a right past a teeny little neighborhood and then another right further out County Line Road. Warm summer air flows in the open windows and through the truck’s cabin, filling it with the scent of manure from the dairy farm sprawling acres and acres to the left. Another right at the Methodist church and we’re almost home.
“Well, hell,” Travis mumbles, slowing the truck.
Our log cabin sits off the road and up and to the right. PaPaw’s brick house and goat barn are several acres over. Between our two properties and all behind span hundreds of more acres of trees. Down the hill sits the little yellow house where Michelle and her mother live. Beyond that are yet more homes with County Line Road winding and curving between. But it’s what’s on the road that has us pausing—
News crews. At least a dozen. They see us slowing around the curve and simultaneously move at once.
Travis’s grip tightens around the steering wheel, and he lets up even more on the gas. “What do I do?” he whispers.
I don’t respond as I hypnotically stare at all the people, the vans, the satellite dishes, the cameras, the reporters with microphones running toward our truck.
“Go!” Kevin frantically shouts, and me and Travis both snap out of our momentary trance.
Travis gives the truck gas and rolls up his window, and Kevin does the same. We all hold our hands up in front of our faces so the cameras can’t get us, and Travis does his best to navigate through the people and to our driveway.
We turn off the road and onto the long gravel driveway that leads up to our home. I pull my cell out to call our parents at the exact second it chimes, and I answer, “Hello?”
“Yes, this is News Channel Four, and we would like to know—”
Immediately I click off, and numbly I stare down at my phone. It really hits me then—my life, all of our lives, are never going to be the same.
THE WHOLE EVENING Michelle’s murder seems to be all that is on the local news. It’s a maddening loop of the small details the authorities have released with pictures of our property and film of the investigators moving in and out of our woods, carrying evidence bags.
“Detective Crandall called,” Dad tells us, “and reminded us we are not to talk to anybody about what happened. These first hours and days are crucial to the investigation. He’s also sending a patrolman to sit watch in our driveway.”
In case whoever did this comes back, I silently add with a fissure of fear.
We go through th
e motions of trying to eat dinner, of trying to do normal things like reading or playing on our phones, but eventually we all just give up and go to bed. There’s nothing about this that is normal.
Now it’s almost midnight, and I lie awake, staring up at my ceiling, listening to my parents do that thing where they whisper talk, like none of us can hear them.
“What are we going to do with all that mess out there?” Mom asks.
By mess I know she means the reporters and cameras.
“I don’t know,” Dad answers. “I called Crandall to see if he could make them leave, and he said as long as they don’t step foot on our property, legally they’re doing nothing wrong.”
“And that cop sitting in our driveway? How long do we get him?”
“I don’t know.” I hear Dad’s feet pace away a few steps and then back. “How’d it go at work today?”
Mom sighs. “So sad. Michelle’s Pre-K teacher was near hysterics at one point. The principal decided to close campus tomorrow in honor.”
“I hate how rough it was on the kids. I don’t want them going the rest of the week. There’s no need.”
“I’ll call their principal tomorrow,” Mom agrees.
A beat of silence goes by, then Dad says in an even softer tone, “Jerry and I went over to see Bee-Bee Doughtery today.”
“How is she?” Mom softly asks.
“How do you think?”
Bee-Bee Doughtery, Michelle’s mom. I’m glad Dad and Uncle Jerry went over to see her. I plan on going tomorrow and will see if Travis and Kevin want to go, too.
My parents continue talking in hushed whispers and knowing I’m not going to be sleeping anytime soon, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit up. Me and sleep have never gotten along. When I was a kid I used to have nightmares all the time. My parents told me I went through a bout of sleep walking, too. Though I don’t remember that. But I do remember the nightmares, or rather I remember waking from them screaming, sweating, crying.
My PaPaw worked with me on it, doing all sorts of sleep therapy and counseling. Eventually, I grew out of the sleep walking and the nightmares, but I still suffer from insomnia. PaPaw says I’ll grow out of that, too, in time. I look forward to that because I can’t remember the last time I slept several hours in a row.