The Creeping

by Alexandra Sirowy

He grunts, and I take it for a yes. I move to stand, but my knees shake and my back bows under the weight. We stagger a step forward, and Mrs. Griever starts barking—there’s no other way to describe her halting laugh—like this is all a joke.

  “You’re not makin’ it back like that, and I said that boy deserves a bullet, not that he got one. It’s rock salt in your leg. Smarts more than a bullet, mind ya, but won’t do no damage if we take it out quick.”

  “You’re insane. I’m not letting you near him,” I yell. “We’re calling the police.”

  “Careful, girl. You’re trespassin’ on my land, and if I’m a day over twenty, you came here for answers. You leave tonight, you ain’t ever comin’ back.”

  I try to move us toward the path, but Sam resists. “Stella, she’s right. We have to stay. I’m . . . I’ll be fine,” he says in a faint voice. I drag my cell out of my pocket. No service. No way to call for help.

  “The longer you stall, girl, the longer he’ll be in pain. I’ve got to take the salt from his wound. Bring him inside.”

  Her silhouette moves past us, seemingly gliding. It travels up the porch and converges with the shadows. Deep inside the shack there’s the scrape of something heavy dragged across the floor, and then a warm glow seeps out the doorway.

  “C’mon, this is the only way,” Sam whispers, limping forward and guiding me rather than me helping him. The porch protests loudly under our weight as we lunge over the busted steps. We pause at the mouth of the door. The faint light wafts down a long hallway—longer than I would have expected, given how little and squatty the shack looks from outside—and smoke makes the air shimmery and thick.

  “Sam.” I catch his chin and make him look at me. His eyes have the look of pink-rimmed black marbles. And it’s my fault. “I swear I’d get you to the hospital.”

  He swallows the pain and smiles feebly. “I know you would.”

  Without another word he lifts his injured leg over the threshold and tugs me inside. As we struggle through the last door in the hall, we see Griever hunched over a stone fireplace. Suspended over the flames is a giant cast-iron pot; she stokes the blaze, and the flames lick its sides. She sinks into a crouch and holds long metal tweezers into the heat until their tips glow molten. Sam hobbles to an empty chair.

  “I tan leather at night.” She clinks the tweezers on the cauldron. I can just make out a brown solid bubbling up from the water on the surface. It has the look of an empty sack of skin. “Boilin’ rather than jus’ soakin’ keeps the hide from crackin,’” she adds. It’s the stench of cooking leather pervading my mouth, lungs, and nostrils.

  She rises nimbly from the fire and hurries to Sam’s side, where she squats at his feet. She doesn’t move like someone who’s ancient, about to break down. “Have you done this before?” I ask, eyeing the bottle of rubbing alcohol and strips of gauze.

  “When I was younger, I nursed sick folk back to health,” she says, wielding a pair of scissors. She cuts Sam’s pant leg off at the thigh. I creep closer and gasp at what I see. Griever gives me a fierce stare, and I get ahold of myself. There are maybe ten or twelve wounds, seething and bubbling where large shards of salt like glass are embedded in the minced skin.

  “Why shoot me if you thought I was Daniel?” Sam asks, averting his eyes from his leg.

  “That boy’s been stickin’ his nose round here since he was a scrawny li’l thing just off the breast. Empty stare. Stumbled on him in the woods that same summer your li’l friend went missin’, saw his game diggin’ the eyes from a squirrel he snared. I got a name for rotten ones like that.” She wags her tweezers in Sam’s face. “Boys.”

  I prop my clammy hands on my hips. Griever’s words are a line cast into my sea of formless memories. It snatches a few out with it, giving them shape. I remember Daniel sticking potato bugs in a glass jar and shaking once. I remember that he used to collect these spiders that had bloated bellies and wiry crimped legs. He trapped them in an old container with breathing holes drilled through the lid in order to keep them indefinitely. I even remember him going out of his way to step on crickets. Horrible, yeah, but boys are always messing around with bugs and mud. Torturing squirrels is another thing. A sick, demented thing. Not the kind of thing a boy who loves his sister as much as Daniel loved Jeanie has in him. A surge of anger rushes through me, and if it wasn’t for Sam grinding his teeth to bear the pain as Griever sticks tweezers into the first festering cut, I’d lose it with her.

  “Daniel’s only after answers. He’s lost his whole family,” I say sharply.

  “Is that so?” she clucks. I can’t tell if she doesn’t know or if she’s being sarcastic. “Girl, get to askin’ me your questions before I run outta patience with ya.”

  I look to Sam for help, but his eyes are scrunched closed, sweat shines on his forehead, and he’s rounded forward like he’s trying not to be sick. It’s painful to watch him, so I pace. “What’s buried in your yard?” I ask, failing miserably at delicacy.

  Griever doesn’t miss a beat. “Animals, but you already know that. I heard you diggin’ ’em up and findin’ a dog.”

  My stride falters. I try to tie my hair back from my face, but my hands are shaking so badly I can’t make a knot. Instead I just wring them like some kind of OD’ing schizo. “So there’s someone—or a group of someones—who are sacrificing animals in Savage, right?”

  Half her face shadowed, she watches me, her good eye trained on mine, the tweezers lingering at the mouth of Sam’s open wound. “Same families have been doin’ it for generations. Only one of their bloodlines left, though. Don’t know how it started, but we’ve been tryin’ to stave off the evil for years.”

  My mind plods over her muddy words. “ ‘We’ve?’ ” I breathe.

  “Ahhh, there ya go, girl. That’s right. I’m the last one.” She turns back to the tattered skin on Sam’s leg. “Mind ya, I don’t get round like I used to. I got holes in my bones where the age has eaten through. Long time ago there were other families doin’ it. Backwoods folks mostly. They’ve all died off or moved on. Now it’s jus’ me, sacrificin’ the li’l things, givin’ ’em proper burials, hidin’ their corpses from pryin’ eyes.”

  “You’re saying that your family has been killing dozens—hundreds maybe—of animals? You’re confessing to slaughtering house pets?” She doesn’t call me an idiot. I’m right. But her smile is a half sneer, and it’s like she doesn’t understand what a gruesome confession her silence is. “And you’re killing them in sacrifice? You believe you’re appeasing the spirits or gods or whatever?”

  She lurches at me, bloody tweezers clutched in her hand, still on her knees, and hisses, “Not whatever. Whatever is the thing that’s sucklin’ on the bones of those li’l lost girls.” She jabs the tweezers in the air to make her point and then turns back to work.

  Sam braces himself against the chair arms and straightens out of his slump. He pants under the effort it takes to stack each vertebra in a column. He’s pasty, and his lips are blue by the time he finishes, but the pain’s ironed out from his voice. “The animal disappearances don’t just coincide with kidnappings. They happen after accidents, too. How could you think you could stop car collisions, or illness, or fires? Whatever took those girls isn’t causing accidents.”

  She snorts, regarding him. “Who are you to say what evil can and can’t do? And I said there used to be other families workin’ on stavin’ it off. Backwoods folks more superstitious than mine. I know who it’s got an appetite for. But other families blamed it for every loss in Savage.”

  A cold current rushes through the room, and I start noticing things. I was so focused on Sam that I didn’t wonder what kind of hide Griever’s tanning to make leather; I didn’t see the animal pelts nailed to the wall. There are seventy or maybe a hundred of them, covering every square inch of space. They give off this hot-animal-fur stench that turns my stomach into a roiling sea. Some are furry pelts and others are just leather hides. Dimly I register her saying, “My
family’s been the only one goin’ round and collectin’ their bodies to bury for generations. I don’t take their coats off unless they’re somethin’ special.”

  I have to look away. I can’t stand to wonder which are dogs and cats. I don’t need to examine the hides she considers special. How could a woman who used to nurse people back to health be capable of this? How could anyone do this? Unless . . . I sweep my arms, encompassing the room full of animal carnage. “However awful all this is, whatever you’re trying to stop is worse, isn’t it?”

  “There ya go, girl,” Griever growls, grinning.

  Despite the heat and the animal carcasses—or maybe because of them—I start to shiver. Griever drops shard after shard of salt onto the floor at her feet. Sam’s brow gradually uncreases, his shoulders relax, his breath eases.

  “It’s been in the woods since before people settled here. Monster,” I whisper, furious that my mouth forms the syllables but helpless to stop it.

  “That’s jus’ a word we use for what we don’t understand.” She slices off a long piece of gauze and wraps it around the mangled flesh on Sam’s leg. “You’ll heal with some scars, but it won’t get infected.” She carries her tools back to the fire to sanitize them. I stumble to Sam’s side, dabbing his forehead on my sleeve and pressing my lips to his temple.

  Griever glides easily across the room and dips a glass into a bucket. She offers the cloudy water to Sam, who takes it and gulps gratefully. Then she crouches on the floor by the fire, watching us, her good pupil trained in our direction and the milky one veering sharply away.

  “The Creepin’, ” she whispers hoarsely. So quietly I think maybe I misunderstand. “That’s what you’re after.”

  I shake my head, not getting it. “The Creeping?”

  She raises one arthritic finger to her cracked lips, shushing me. “Be careful who could be listenin’.” I look around to make it obvious that we’re alone. She raises her eyebrow, mocking me. “It’s the name my ma gave it. Other families had their own—those who spoke about it, at least. ’Cause some folks wouldn’t for fear talkin’ about it would draw it in.”

  Sure the room’s temperature has dropped a few degrees, I lean closer to Sam, who’s staring intently at Griever. She pulls a pocketknife and a thick stick from the folds of her dress and starts whittling absentmindedly, filaments of white bark scattering in front of her like snowflakes.

  “What is it?” Sam asks, sounding stronger already.

  The shwet shwet of her knife slicing at the stick doesn’t stop. “Don’t know exactly. I don’t put creed in thinkin’ it’s a force causin’ accidents. Best I can describe it is this: It’s an appetite, a creature bent on feedin’. It craves a certain kind of li’l girl, and if it can’t get its hooks into what it wants, anyone in its path will do.”

  My fingernails are blue from cold and gouging into the back of the wooden chair hard enough to leave claw marks. I chew the inside of my cheek, hoping to jolt myself awake from the nightmare I’m obviously trapped in.

  “But what is it?” Sam prods. “Where did it come from? Is it an animal? A person?”

  She shrugs, cool amusement playing on her face. “It might have started out as one or the other. But once it peeled the flesh from a babe’s arm jus’ to hear her blubber, it stopped bein’ either.”

  “Like the devil,” I murmur.

  Griever appraises me, running her tongue over her gray gums. “There’s no devil. Doesn’t need to be, with what actually lurks high in those hills. Trust me, you don’t wanna be after rememberin’ it. When I was a li’l thing, folks in Savage wanted it kept secret. Maybe people are still after keepin’ it quiet?”

  “But why keep it a secret?” I sputter. “If parents knew, they wouldn’t let their kids in the woods. The disappearances would stop.”

  Griever waggles a splintered yellow fingernail at me. “You see, when folks knew ’bout it when I was a girl, there were those who preyed on their fear. Did things to li’l girls and blamed it on the Creepin’, knowin’ full well they’d get away with it. Sure, the critter sank its latch hooks into some of ’em, but men and women took others. Folks thought it was better to keep quiet ’bout the monster they knew than to unleash all they didn’t.”

  “That’s why the graves in the cemetary were tampered with,” Sam says. “Someone didn’t want future generations seeing all those graves of little children and investigating what happened, finding out about the creature if it had been forgotten. Betty Balco and the other girls went missing, and they never found who did it. And you’re saying this—this thing took some of them, but people took others because they thought they could hide behind the legend? And they were right. When this happened eighty years ago, they never made any arrests.”

  “But that’s not happening now,” I say. “If people were trying to cover it up, they wouldn’t have let Jeanie’s case go unsolved for eleven years, right? They would have found a viable suspect. Put the case to rest so people didn’t ask questions.”

  “Maybe they thought it would go away?” Sam says. “One little girl’s an anomaly after so many years. But Jane Doe showed up dead and they figured it’s happening again and they hustled all the charges on Kent Talcott. Rather than letting people know there’s something in the woods, they’re sending an innocent man to prison.”

  “But how does anyone know about it?” I ask Griever.

  She tilts her head back, regarding me. “Same way folks know ’bout anythin’. Someone told ’em. Stories passed down through generations. Even though a lot of the old families have died out or moved on, you got some who’ve lived here for years. I bet they know ’bout the Creepin’. How couldn’t they know a monster’s afoot with all those dead li’l girls turnin’ up?”

  Griever sets her jaw so her jowls twitch in the firelight. I want desperately to believe she’s mostly crazy, brain turned to mush with age, spinning stories to justify a pathological violence against animals. Yet I don’t.

  I move out from behind Sam. “This thing is what took Jeanie? You helped her once, though, didn’t you? You found her when she was lost in the woods a month before she disappeared.” I recall the good witch that Jeanie said helped her.

  Griever licks her lips. “I seen you kids playin’ at huntin’ lots of times. I told you and your li’l redheaded friend to be careful what ya looked for, ya jus’ might find it. Yous were stubborn li’l brats who didn’t listen.” And there it is. A mystery solved. Griever warned Jeanie and me, and we didn’t listen.

  “You.” I struggle to keep my bearing. “ ‘If you hunt for monsters, you’ll find them.’ You told us that. Why didn’t you tell the cops?”

  “Police were lookin’ for someone to blame. Someone to hold responsible for the missing li’l girl. I wasn’t gonna admit to talkin’ to yous out here alone.”

  I run it through my mind until it’s smooth and shiny. All these months since I read the case file I’ve been parroting what Griever said to shoo us from the woods. To keep us safe and alive, but we didn’t listen, and Jeanie died for it.

  I rub my damp hands on my jeans. “Do you know where to find it? Is it at Norse Rock? Is that where it spots its victims?”

  A wet snort. “I ain’t tellin’ you. You go up there”—she points at the west wall—“you won’t come back. You ain’t monster enough to survive.”

  “But Mr. Talcott confessed yesterday,” I say, taking a step toward her. “No one’s looking for it anymore, and I have to prove it wasn’t him.”

  She juts out her chin, examining the sharp tip of the wooden dagger she’s whittled. “Grief does funny things to folk,” she says thoughtfully. A moment later she rises hastily. “It’s time for yous to leave. Out with ya.” She waves her hands like we’re flames she’ll fan out.

  “But he can barely walk.” I rush to support Sam as he stands unsteadily from the chair, wincing to put weight on both legs.

  “Not my concern. You’ve brought too much trouble round already. Be off.” She waves the
pointed stick in the air. Sam takes my hand, coaxing me along as he limps to the doorway. We move surprisingly fast through the hall and back into the night. My eyes take a minute to adjust, and for a while we’re in pitch blackness. Who knows what beasts could be stalking us from the shadows? I help Sam over the busted steps and we start toward the path.

  “Girl,” Griever hisses from the mouth of the shack, “best you jus’ move on from here. Take your fella and thank your lucky stars it wasn’t you.”

  With Sam’s arm slung over my shoulders, I can see only her head as I glance back. A floating head with black holes under her brow where her eyes should be. I should listen to Griever. But I am stubborn, and stupid, and brave.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It takes ages for us to get back to Sam’s car. Fear nips at my heels with every step, and I get the sense that we’re being watched, followed, hunted even. The white disk of a moon casts enough light for us to see a few steps ahead, and the bramble on either side is black and impenetrable.

  “We’re okay, Stella. There’s nothing out here,” Sam murmurs when I whimper at the nearby crunch of leaves. Yards past the old Victorian house, the lane’s only streetlight shines as a second moon.

  Somehow we make it to the station wagon without being attacked by night creatures. I help Sam into the passenger seat and sprint to the driver’s side. Once inside I slam my hand down on the door lock—that little click of the car doors being secured the most comforting sound in the world. The car rumbles to life, and I pitch it into drive. I accelerate down the lane and only slow when we hit downtown.

  We don’t speak the whole way home. Sam’s arms stay braced against the door and center console. His breathing is an erratic and harsh melody filling the cab. I’m sad and relieved for different reasons when I round my street corner and see Dad’s car still missing from the driveway. “Can you stay with me tonight?” I ask, turning into the driveway.

  “What about your dad?” he asks.

  I point to the digital clock reading 2:05 a.m. “If Dad works past midnight, he crashes in his office.”