The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

by Rhett McLaughlin

  12

  “OH, LORD, I didn’t know you meant an interview that would be filmed with your camera,” Aunt Roberta said, nervously playing with her wedding ring as she watched Janine unpack her tripod on the kitchen floor.

  “Oh,” Janine said. “Is that…a problem?”

  “Well, no,” Aunt Roberta said, smiling. She had the same sunny disposition as GamGam and the same determination to maintain it at all costs. Janine’s mom—and, by extension, Janine—must not have gotten that gene. “It’s not a problem. I just…Well, I thought you’d be takin’ notes to write an article for a newspaper, somethin’ like that.”

  “Nope,” Janine said. “I’m making a documentary.” She had to stop herself from unleashing any sarcastic barbs that might further ruffle her aunt. But, come on: Aunt Roberta knew Janine went to film school. Why would she be writing a newspaper article? She felt a pulse of shame, realizing that she was blood related to someone who could be so dense. That was followed by a bigger pulse of shame as she recognized that she, in turn, could be so judgmental.

  “Oh, wow, so you’ve been filming people? In town?”

  Again, Janine bit her tongue. “Yes, Aunt Roberta. That’s what you do when you make a documentary.”

  “Who have you been talking to?” Aunt Roberta seemed jumpier than usual, even as she kept up her shiny, happy façade. Janine didn’t want to make her nervous, but she didn’t want to put her completely at ease, either. What she wanted was answers. She knew that the string of deaths at Whitewood had begun after Donna’s time there, but surely Aunt Roberta had an opinion about them. And there had to be a good reason she’d never told Janine about Donna attending the school. She was determined to find out about it.

  But now, standing in the house that Roberta and Donna shared, watching her aunt fidget and flutter like a hummingbird, Janine felt more inclined to gently pry than ruthlessly interrogate. She reminded herself that Roberta probably never expected Donna to come back from the school as broken as she had, and also that Uncle Jim had been dead for almost ten years, leaving her aunt to deal with the new Donna all alone. Suddenly Janine felt terrible for her. Damn you, empathy. It was much easier to just be pissed.

  “I’ve only spoken to a couple of people so far,” Janine said.

  “And what is it exactly that you’re interviewing people about?” Aunt Roberta said now. “I think GamGam mentioned you’re asking folks about kidney stones…?”

  Janine couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something about Aunt Roberta’s clueless questions that tipped her off. Aunt Roberta was deliberately deceiving her.

  “I was at first, yeah,” Janine said, humoring her aunt, thinking she should wait to reveal the truth until the camera was on, and then deciding it would be kinder not to. “But now I’m interviewing people about the Whitewood School. I believe you’re familiar with it?”

  “Oh, really? That school on the edge of town?”

  “I know, Aunt Roberta,” Janine said. “I know that Donna went there.”

  Aunt Roberta kept smiling, even as something in her eyes crumpled.

  “And you never told me,” Janine added.

  Her aunt’s smile slowly wilted, and she began to shake.

  “Are you okay?” Janine wasn’t sure what was happening. “I didn’t mean to…It’s okay, we don’t have to do this right now.”

  Aunt Roberta silently beckoned her to come closer.

  As Janine walked forward, she looked into her aunt’s eyes and saw it: pure, paralyzing fear. “You can’t make this movie,” Aunt Roberta said, her voice only slightly above a whisper.

  “Why not?” Janine asked, the hair on her neck rising to attention.

  “Just…don’t.”

  Janine had the sense she was on the verge of pulling back the curtain on the Whitewood School, if she could just keep Aunt Roberta talking. “Is there a reason,” she asked, with as much tenderness as she could, “that you never told the family Donna went to that school?”

  Aunt Roberta covered her eyes. “I…We were embarrassed.” She began to sob. “We just wanted to help her…We didn’t think it would…” She sniffed and wiped her nose. “But I’m serious, Janine. You can’t make this movie. I won’t let you.”

  Janine felt both compassion and rage. “But what happened to Donna? What did they do to her that made her change so much?”

  Aunt Roberta just looked away, shaking her head.

  “And what about the kids that have died?”

  “Please,” she said, again covering her face with her hand.

  “Aunt Roberta!” Janine couldn’t help but raise her voice. “Don’t you want to stop this from happening again?”

  “We tried!” Aunt Roberta shouted, causing Janine to involuntarily take a half step back. “Your uncle and I tried to do…everything you’re saying. And it wasn’t worth it. I don’t want to see you get—I just can’t let you do that to yourself.”

  “But if you knew something happened,” Janine said, “why didn’t you at least go to the police?”

  Aunt Roberta’s eyes went cold.

  “Jim did,” she said, staring past Janine. “He told Sheriff Lawson there was somethin’ wrong with that place.”

  “And what did he say?” Janine asked, realizing she was finally getting somewhere.

  Aunt Roberta lowered her head, her eyes welling up with tears. “I don’t think it was an accident, Janine. You understand what I’m saying? What happened to Jim…So that’s why you need to stop all this. You understand me? You just can’t—”

  There were three loud knocks at the front door. Aunt Roberta’s head snapped toward the sound, looking panicked, as if ready to escape through a window if necessary.

  “Are you expecting anybody?” Janine asked.

  “Helloooo!” a woman’s voice chirped from the other side of the door.

  Aunt Roberta stared into space, the gears in her brain spinning.

  “Do you know who that is?”

  “Mary Hattaway,” she said, more to herself than to Janine.

  Mary Hattaway…where do I know that name from? Janine thought.

  Aunt Roberta wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “Let me do the talking,” she whispered.

  “Um. Okay.” Janine watched as her aunt crossed the room and opened the door.

  “Hi, Mary!” Aunt Roberta said, suddenly back to her sunny self, a way more convincing performance than her earlier one. “What a nice surprise—come on in.”

  “Thank you, Roberta,” Mary Hattaway said as she stepped into the house. She was tall and blond, in her forties, wearing a blue suit with giant gold buttons and shoulder pads that rivaled an NFL linebacker’s. She looked like a real estate agent that ate other real estate agents for breakfast. Janine instantly disliked her. “I was just in the neighborhood and thought, You know who I haven’t seen in a while? Roberta! I hope you don’t mind me poppin’ in like this.”

  “Not at all,” Aunt Roberta said.

  “Oh darlin’, your makeup,” Mary said, slightly horrified. “You been cryin’?”

  Aunt Roberta froze for a moment before making a quick recovery. “Well, yes. We were just watchin’ Steel Magnolias. Probably my tenth time seein’ the thing, but it still gets me.”

  “Hmm,” Mary said, her attempt at being sympathetic. “Dolly Parton should’ve never gotten mixed up in Hollywood, if you ask me.” She flashed her white teeth at Janine. “And who might you be?”

  “I’m Roberta’s niece, Janine,” she said, still trying to recover from the whiplash of greeting a guest moments after learning her uncle had likely been murdered.

  “Hi, Janine. I’m Mary Hattaway.” She extended a bony hand, which Janine had no choice but to shake.

  “Mary’s the secretary over at our church,” Aunt Roberta said.

  Oh, right. The secretary
at Second Baptist. The one in that Gazette article who said that kids were being…what was it? Oh yeah, “bombarded by sex.”

  “You bet I am,” Mary said. “What brings you to town, Janine?” The woman’s piercing eyes made the conversation feel unnecessarily intense.

  “Just visiting,” Janine said, knowing it was what her aunt wanted her to say.

  “Would you like to join us in the kitchen, Mary?” Roberta asked. “I was just about to make some coffee.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet, but I only have a minute before I have to get back to work. Is that your camera, Janine?” She pointed into the kitchen, where the camcorder still sat on the table.

  “You bet it is,” Janine said.

  Mary smiled coldly, picking up on the echo of her own words. “How cute,” she said. “My daughter Tammy likes playing around with cameras too. Just got her a Polaroid for her birthday. She’s been havin’ a ball with it.”

  Janine wished she could keep her mouth shut and go with the flow for her aunt’s sake, but she knew it wasn’t happening. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t play around with my camera.”

  “No?” Mary cocked her head to the side like an inquisitive spaniel.

  “Not at all,” Janine said. “I’m making a documentary.”

  “You sure you don’t want to stay for some coffee, Mary?” Aunt Roberta said as she went ahead and loaded up the Mr. Coffee machine, her veneer of sunniness again starting to feel manufactured. “It should only take a minute.”

  “What’s it about?” Mary asked, ignoring the question and taking a step closer to Janine, who held her ground even though she wanted nothing more than to leave the room.

  “Well,” Janine said. She could feel Aunt Roberta looking at her, desperately hoping Janine would say the right thing. But Janine was pretty sure Mary already knew what the movie was about—that it was, in fact, why she’d stopped by in the first place—so she felt fine throwing her off the scent a bit. “It’s about architecture.”

  “Oh. How interesting.” Janine could tell Mary wasn’t expecting that. “In our town?”

  “In lots of towns,” Janine said. “I’ve been filming buildings and structures all over the country.” The word structures seemed like an odd choice once she’d said it, but Mary didn’t seem to notice.

  “Hmm. Fascinating.” Mary kept holding eye contact with Janine, as if she were scrutinizing her soul. “I bet my daughter would love to see this little movie when it’s finished.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet,” Janine said coldly.

  After a few moments, Mary finally looked away. “Well, guess I should be gettin’ back to work!” she said. “Roberta, I hope you’ll be bringin’ Janine with you on Sunday. We’d love to see you there.”

  “I’m Jewish,” Janine said to Mary, knowing full well she could have just nodded and smiled. “We don’t really do Sundays.”

  “Oh, gosh,” Mary said, genuinely surprised for the second time that visit. “That’s…just fine.” She shook her head. That’s too bad is what she’d been about to say. Janine was sure of it. She’d forgotten about this aspect of her Bleak Creek visits—how people never really knew how to hide their mix of fascination, prejudice, and sympathy for those unlike themselves—but it all came flooding back to her.

  “My sister married a Jewish man,” Aunt Roberta explained.

  “Well, Janine, you’re still welcome to come by anyway.” Mary looked very proud of her own benevolence. “If you’d like.”

  “I doubt it,” Janine said, smiling. “But thanks.”

  Mary stared at her a beat. “See you Sunday, Roberta.” She opened the door and was gone, leaving an offensive trail of White Diamonds by Elizabeth Taylor in her wake.

  Aunt Roberta walked into the kitchen and sat down at the small brown table. She looked tired. “I told you to let me do the talking,” she said.

  “I know,” Janine said, sitting down across from her. “I’m sorry.”

  Aunt Roberta let out a defeated sigh. “I meant what I said about Jim. These people…I don’t think you understand who you’re dealing with here.”

  Janine was suddenly overcome by the magnitude of what her aunt was saying, the sheer awfulness of it. For lack of knowing what else to do, she stood up and walked behind her aunt’s chair, draping her arms around her in an awkward hug.

  “I miss my family,” Aunt Roberta said, starting to cry again. “Donna. The old Donna. Jim. I miss them so much.”

  “I know. Me too.”

  “Not a day goes by that I don’t wish we’d never sent Donna to that school. Not a day.”

  Janine wasn’t sure if this was the right moment for a question, but she tried anyway. “Why did you send her?”

  Aunt Roberta sniffed a few times. “She…smelled like beer one night. Jim and I got scared.”

  Janine couldn’t believe how ridiculous that was, that all of this tragedy had happened because Donna had once smelled like beer. Who knows if she’d even been the one drinking it.

  But Janine knew it would do no good to point that out.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Roberta. So sorry for everything you’ve been through.”

  “Thank you, honey.”

  Her aunt turned to look Janine in the eye. “Now, I’ve got nothin’ else to say about that place. I mean it.”

  “I understand.”

  “You need to put that camera away and start makin’ plans to get back to New York.”

  Janine nodded politely, knowing full well that she wasn’t headed to New York anytime soon. After suffering through a cup of horribly weak coffee and labored small talk, she hugged Aunt Roberta one last time and headed out the door, then walked under the huge oak tree toward the street. As she approached GamGam’s car, parked at the curb in front of the house, she froze.

  Scrawled in red paint across the passenger side doors were two words:

  Leave Bitch.

  13

  “SEE? HE’S NOT here,” Leif said in the darkness, his back against a long-abandoned tobacco barn near the Whitewood School property. “He was messing with us the whole time. Let’s go home.”

  “What time is it?” Rex asked.

  Leif found it annoying that Rex so often made fun of his Casio calculator watch but still regularly asked him for the time (and to do math). “It’s 11:58,” he said, illuminating the digital watch face. “He’s not coming.”

  An owl loudly hooted from the nearby trees, as if to emphatically agree with Leif.

  “Ben will be here,” Rex insisted.

  “It just changed to 11:59 as you said that.”

  “Okay, fine, whatever. But let’s give it till at least 12:01.”

  “He said midnight.”

  “You can’t give it one extra minute?”

  “Not really!” Leif was tired of terrifying situations. His life had become a steady drumbeat of fear, worry, manipulation by Rex, and then more fear and worry. When Rex had said he’d meet up with Ben whether Leif came along or not—that Alicia was “depending on them to follow every lead, to help her however they could”—well, of course Leif was going along too. But he wasn’t thrilled about it. He couldn’t shake the feeling this was all going to end very badly.

  Leif startled as the owl hooted again. “Welp, it’s midnight,” he said, pointing to his lit Casio. “Let’s go!”

  Rex tried to remain composed, but Leif was frustrating when he got like this. And a tiny part of him wondered if maybe Ben was going to stand them up. “Look, we have to wait until at least 12:01, because every second of 12:00 counts as midnight.”

  “That’s not true,” Leif said. “Every second after midnight is the next day. He said Friday night at midnight. It’s Saturday!”

  Before Rex could continue the argument, the owl hooted again, louder than ever, followed by what sounded like an animal landing in the gra
ss at the tree line. Rex and Leif froze in place as they stared into the inky dark, listening as the thing crept toward them. The creature came closer, the gibbous moon making it obvious—much to Leif’s simultaneous relief and disappointment—that it was human. A chunk of pale hair poked out from under a misshapen fur hat. Ben hooted again once he was next to them.

  “The owl in the tree was you?” Leif asked.

  “Yes,” Ben said. “I was the owl in the tree.”

  Ben looked dirtier than usual. His entire face was caked with mud, as was his jumpsuit. Leaves, pine straw, and twigs were stuck to his torso and limbs in various spots.

  “It’s camo,” Ben said, noticing Rex and Leif staring. “I shouldn’t even be this close to the school, so I need to take every precaution.”

  “Yeah, but we shouldn’t be this close to the school either,” Leif said. “Whitewood knows who we are. If we’re caught out here, he’ll probably just, like, grab us and take us to the school without even asking our parents.”

  “That’s not how it works,” Ben said.

  “Yeah,” Rex agreed.

  “But…shouldn’t we also have camo?” Leif asked.

  “There’s plenty of dirt,” Ben said, sweeping a leafy arm toward the barren patch underneath the buckling barn’s awning. “Help yourself.”

  “I’ll pass,” Rex said.

  Leif contemplated for a moment, then slowly crouched down and tried to dig his nails into the earth. It was cement-like, compacted by cattle traffic. He moved his hands around, hoping to find a softer spot. His fingers entered what felt like a pile of mud.

  “Ah, shit!” Leif whisper-shouted.

  “You said it,” affirmed Ben. “I was gonna tell you to watch your step for cow pies out here, but I didn’t think I needed to tell you to watch your, uh, hands.”

  Leif stood up, thankful the night was covering his blushing. He took a step into the grass, careful to avoid making his situation worse by stumbling into another bovine deposit, and knelt down, running his soiled hand through the thick blades.

  “At least you’ll smell like a cow. That’s a form of camouflage, I guess,” Rex said, snickering as he pulled his backpack over one shoulder.