The Creeping

by Alexandra Sirowy

  Shane’s eyebrows draw together, and he says softly, “But why keep a portion of her scalp? And why bother returning the rest to her head when he dumped the body?” I called Shane that first day in the hospital to tell him where I thought he’d find the missing piece.

  I’m aware that my heels are tapping in place, and my organs feel like they’re pinballing inside me. “He left the hair on Jane Doe’s head like it never happened. Maybe he felt bad when he realized she wasn’t his sister? But he took the piece—it was the proof he never had of Jeanie being dead. He needed proof or else he’d see her everywhere too. She’d haunt him as he thought Jeanie was haunting him.”

  We accelerate on to the highway. In three exits we’ll be in Savage. Bristly pines line the road, and I avert my eyes. I don’t want to stare into them. “We’ve identified the little girl,” Shane says.

  “How?” I turn to face him.

  “The evidence told the story.” He frowns at the horizon. I don’t think he’s shaven since Jane Doe was found, and there’s a fine dusting of white in his beard. “Daniel’s backpack contained a couple of crumpled receipts. They’re from cities between here and Portland, Maine, where he was staying with his aunt. Using them, we charted the route he took to Savage and contacted local authorities. Her name was Becca.” He allows an intentional moment of silence. “He snatched her the evening before the bonfire, only hours before he arrived in Savage. She was a foster kid. The group home didn’t even realize she was missing for several days.”

  Daniel chose his victim perfectly. We’ll never know if he realized he could use Becca’s body to frame someone for Jeanie’s disappearance before or after he killed her. Was the murder calculated, a means to an end? Daniel was full of hate for Jeanie, his little sister who he tried to teach. Perhaps killing her once hadn’t been enough? Mrs. Talcott’s death wasn’t as ambiguous. Daniel’s mom saw through him; he hadn’t planned on killing her. But it was an opportunity that he didn’t waste; it made Mr. Talcott a likelier suspect.

  I catch the tail end of a very paternal-sounding pep talk from Shane. “Savage will heal. This isn’t like when Jeanie was taken. We know who to hold responsible. We don’t need to be afraid. The newspapers will get tired of writing about Daniel now that he’s dead. Caleb will get the help he needs.”

  We’ve exited the highway and turn right on Main Street, and I see how close his words are to being realized. Storefronts have thrown open their shutters; kids swing and whoop on the monkey bars at the jungle gym across from city hall; the bible-thumping picketers waving their rapture slogans have vanished. There’s even a line of kids streaming from Powel’s Candy Shop.

  I touch my fingers to the window as we drive past; where three of my nails should be, there are patchy violet scabs. For me it’s too soon to heal. It’s too soon to forgive myself for what I couldn’t remember, what I could have prevented if I only had. It won’t happen again. I’m working out all the details; the devil won’t be able to hide in them. “Daniel’s motivation for everything was Jeanie,” I say.

  Shane nods. “That jells with why we think Daniel placed Becca’s remains in the cemetery.”

  I nod; working through the details and laying them to rest makes my insides solid. “He knew she’d be found at the bonfire on the anniversary of Jeanie’s disappearance,” I say. Not only was it the most dramatic way for Daniel to reveal the body, but the timing would serve as yet another link to Jeanie. We round the corner on to my street. I hold my breath until I see it’s mostly deserted. Any news vans camped out for a glimpse of the “girl who was left behind” must be at the police station where Caleb was taken.

  “So what about the finger bone?” The thousand-year-old bone is one of the last remaining pieces without a place.

  “It’s likely he found the bone in the woods near Mrs. Griever’s, and he assumed it was Jeanie’s,” he says. “Daniel was smart. He must have known that Becca looking so much like Jeanie would link the cases, but the finger bone would solidify the link. The bone is likely a Chippewa artifact, as we first suspected.” Shane exhales a long, whistling breath. “Why do you think Daniel came back? We weren’t looking for him.”

  I sink lower in my seat as we pass a clump of neighbors standing on their lawn. I’m not in the mood to be gawked at. “He thought it was only a matter of time until I remembered. He just wanted someone—anyone—to be arrested for Jeanie,” I say. “He thought Griever must have come across Jeanie’s body. He wondered if she was still waiting to be discovered in the woods. He probably planned to find Jeanie—well, the rest of her, if he thought he already had her finger—and phone in an anonymous tip or something. He didn’t care who was arrested for the crime. He blamed everyone else—me, his father, Griever, and Caleb.”

  He was wrong, not only because he shot the arrow. If Jeanie had survived that summer, there would have been more games in the woods. I keep coming back to the tin of spiders around Jeanie’s neck. My stomach twists over it. With every kink, I remember what I couldn’t make sense of as a child: Jeanie despondent when she learned that Daniel was riding on our bus for the school picnic at Blackdog; Jeanie petrified that Daniel would kill the ladybugs on the strawberries because he killed every little critter or pet she ever loved; Jeanie spooked, guarding against the woods, because Daniel was watching her. He was always watching, I recall. He liked seeing her squirm and cry. He liked making her cave to his will.

  Who knows, maybe Daniel was lying about aiming the arrow at me. Maybe his violence against Jeanie had escalated, and when he saw what he’d done, he realized he couldn’t take it back and ran for his mother? The concerned-brother routine was all an act. Daniel didn’t care about justice for Jeanie. He cared about escaping what he’d done to her. Maybe it was the woods? The monster? The hunt? Or maybe Daniel was rotten, fated to maim from the start?

  I splay my mottled fingers on my thighs. Tying up the loose ends of the mystery surrounding Jeanie is all I’ve thought about for days, but there’s no great satisfaction in solving it. “What about Betty Balco and the others from the 1930s? Why wasn’t Jeanie’s case connected with theirs?” I ask. It’s the last of the blurry details plaguing me.

  Shane drags his hand across his mouth. “You gotta understand that was a long time ago, kid. There’s no one alive now—or even when Jeanie was taken—who was on the force then. Hell, the children of the men on the force in the 1930s aren’t even alive today. It was decades before records were stored on computers and at a time when people didn’t talk like we do now about criminals who hurt children. Generations pass and crimes get left behind.” The car bumps up my driveway, and he puts it in park. He twists to face me, his forehead pleating. “But between you and me, I think people wanted those disappearances forgotten. They were unsolved and ugly. Savage was a small town at its beginning. I bet they tried their best to keep it quiet after they didn’t make an arrest. The tampered graves appear to be evidence of that. I took a look and agree that they were vandalized a long time ago.”

  It’s painful to meet his red-rimmed eyes. I’ve been pushing him hard to solve the coldest of cold cases for the last two days. I want to be able to wash my hands of it. I want to bury the tiny seed of doubt and not have it sprout into a sapling. “There has to be a way to find more details on the investigations.”

  He fiddles with the lid of a Styrofoam cup of coffee in the console. “There’s an old warehouse south of Minneapolis where police records are stored from the surrounding counties after they’ve been closed or retired.” He takes a sip of the brown liquid. His mouth purses, and he replaces the cup in the console. “I’m heading down tomorrow to look through them. I’ll be able to see if there were suspects they never made public. That’s what I’m guessing I’ll find. Sometimes the police know who did it, but they can’t prove it, and crimes go unsolved officially.” He looks more resigned than hopeful.

  I unbuckle my seat belt, carefully drawing the strap over my shoulder, but I don’t move to leave the car. I blink up at him. “
Griever said it was the creature in the woods.”

  He smiles ruefully. “I’m sure she did.”

  I squint at him. “There isn’t even a part of you that wonders?”

  “Stella, you’re the one who figured out a way to prove Daniel killed Jane Doe. You cleared up all the mystery surrounding Jeanie. If a beast killed those kids in the thirties, where has it been? What’s it been up to? Why hasn’t it taken anyone for so long? I don’t wonder. I told you the story of the Norse settlers not to create doubt in your mind, but to eliminate it.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head. “Is that why my grandmother told the story to me? Maybe not. She could have believed like Griever. And why did her mother tell her the story when she was a girl? And why might you retell it to your children someday?” He inclines his head. “Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  I pull the door lever and kick one foot out. “The same story can be used to prove and disprove that the monster exists.” I don’t mean to sound so petulant.

  “Interpretation is everything,” he says in this maddeningly rational way. “It’s only real if you let it be.”

  I know Shane’s right. I want knowing that monsters don’t—can’t—exist to be enough. Instead those missing girls are like flypaper sticking to my thoughts. “It’s crazy,” I admit. “I just need to know for certain what happened to all those little girls. I need that to move on.” Shane’s crescent eyes pool with liquid watching me as I heave out of the sedan. As I bend to wave, he nods his head ever so slightly, an echo of the nod he gave me last September when I asked for the case file, the nod that started everything. I hope this one finishes it.

  Chapter Thirty

  When she gets to my house, Zoey looks smaller. Okay, so no one packs on the freshman fifteen scarfing hospital food, but even I didn’t waste away living off green Jell-O. Every time she catches something moving in her peripheral vision, she recoils like a turtle trying to take cover in its shell. She arrives a few hours after Shane dropped me off, while Dad is still cooking my welcome-home dinner, and Sam and his mom haven’t arrived yet.

  Zoey’s wearing yoga pants and tennis shoes—an ensemble she’d usually consider too casual for the school gym. The plum bruise on her right cheekbone is fading to a sickly yellow. I get bleary-eyed watching her ferret through a box of assorted truffles Dad picked up on the way home from work. She nibbles on the corner of a caramel, then places it back in the box.

  “What?” she snaps as I watch her. “It’s not like I’m contagious.” She selects another truffle and licks it before replacing it. “I’m just not hungry.” She smiles a crooked smile that fades too quickly. It feels like a performance; Zoey playing at being Zoey.

  I shrug. “I’ve never seen you resist stuffing your face when candy is involved is all.” She crosses her arms against her chest as she leans back into Dad’s recliner. The cushions practically swallow her. “How was this morning, you know, since he was found . . . ?”

  She swipes at a tear escaping the corner of her eye. “My mom had a shit-ton of questions. What did I do to Caleb to make him pissed at me? Why would Caleb try to hurt me? How could I believe Caleb could hurt anyone? Once she heard that they found him, she ran down to the police station like she was going to save her innocent baby. It was so freaking obvi that she blames me. Big surprise, right?” I reach for Zoey’s hand and lace my fingers with hers.

  She blinks faster, trying to keep up with the tears. “What are those loose-lipped bitches at school going to say? Who is going to take me to senior prom now? Those dickless guys will treat me like I’ve got a safety pin through my eyebrow or like I wear fat jeans.” She half laughs, half sobs.

  “No, they won’t.” I squeeze her hand. “I won’t let them.”

  Zoey was right about more than Caleb: I did need her protecting me, dragging me forward, dragging me farther from the day Jeanie disappeared. And now I’ll do it for her. Now I’ll protect her from what people might say about Caleb; from what Caleb might say about her; now I’ll protect her from sideways glances and sharp-tongued whispers. I lean forward and brush her shaggy bangs from her eyes. “You are going to have the best year ever. I swear. And besides”—I wink at her—“Sam can set you up with someone for prom.”

  Zoey’s mouth winds up like she’s struggling not to smirk. “I am not going to prom with Dirty Harry.”

  By the time Sam and his mom arrive, Zoey’s polished off five truffles. Her lips are stained dark with chocolate and lip balm as she takes a second portion of Dad’s macaroni and cheese. I watch her closely through dinner anyway. I watch Zoey, and Sam watches me. Every gesture, every word I measure out perfectly, like it’s one of my nana’s recipes. If I’m too chatty or too quiet, Sam will worry; he’ll suspect I’m still thinking about the others. I want Sam to be unburdened from wondering.

  When he kisses me good-bye on the front lawn, his mom in the car trying to give us privacy by studying the contents of her glove box, I lose it and whisper, “Sneak back once your parents are asleep.” Screw it, maybe he’ll hear me crying out in my sleep, shouting back at the nightmares, but tonight I cave to wanting Sam. He stays with the tip of his nose touching mine for a moment, grinning.

  “Give me an hour,” he whispers before pulling away and heading to the car.

  Zoey leaves soon after, the box of truffles tucked under her arm. An hour later, when the glow of Dad’s reading lamp from under his bedroom door goes dark, I tiptoe down the stairs and twist the lock open. Sam’s sitting on the porch with his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

  “I’ll have to leave before your dad gets up for work,” he murmurs into my ear as we move soundlessly up the stairs.

  I lead Sam into my bedroom, the door clicking softly behind us. My childhood night-light casts rainbows on the ceiling. I chart the fractured bands of light, waiting for his lips to meet mine, and then smile into their warmth.

  He pulls back a fraction of an inch. “Am I hurting you?”

  I shake my head and wrap my arms around his neck. My shoulder stings in protest, but I don’t care. I want tonight. I want to know what it’s like to hold Sam so close there aren’t even atoms between us. For as much as tomorrow’s uncertainty scares me, there is nothing uncertain about the way I feel for Sam.

  I untwine my arms and drop down to the bed. I’m so glad Zoey doesn’t believe in buying dumpy bras and that I’m wearing something black and lacy—it even matches my stitches. I pause for only a moment. He thrusts his hands into his pockets, watching me pull my tank top over my head. I crawl backward so my elbows rest on my pillow. I try to give him a sexy come-and-get-me look, but I chew my lip, fighting back how vulnerable I feel. Other guys have seen me in my bra, so it’s not the nakedness factor. It’s that I love him. That I know exactly what I want from him: everything. He moves slowly to the bed, crawling over me on his hands and knees. An arm slips tentatively under me, supporting my head.

  “Is this okay?” he asks, sliding his hand down my back, leaving a trail of sublime heat on my skin.

  “Yes,” I whisper in his ear. His eyes are wide and questioning as he moves his hand to the back of my bra.

  “This?” he asks, unfastening the hooks.

  “Yes. Do you have a . . . ?” I’m too embarrassed to say “condom” out loud. He jerks away, so startled he almost falls off the bed. He grabs hold of the headboard just in time.

  “Overboard,” I say with a giggle.

  His cheeks are glowing red apples. “Stella, we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I’m happy waiting for you. I don’t expect that,” he says.

  I reach for his hand and place it on my waist. My pulse quickens. A thin strip of his skin shows between his jeans and his undershirt. “I’ve never had sex before. You were my first kiss, and I want you to be my first at this too,” I whisper. “I want it to be special.”

  A grin spreads over his face as he pulls his wallet from his jeans pocket and slips out a packet.

  “Do you always come
prepared?” I tease.

  “I’ve been carrying this around since I was thirteen,” he jabbers. “Not this exact one—not that I’ve been using them, just because they expire, you know.” A beat later. “I’ve never had sex either.” My grin is even wider than his.

  He tugs the undershirt up and over his head. I reach for him. He kisses my neck, brushing his lips over my collarbone. I arch my back. I quiver. But mostly I smile. Through every single second, through every kiss, through every half moan, even when it’s uncomfortable at first, I smile because despite everything—monsters and men—I love Sam.

  It’s still dark when Sam lifts his weight from the mattress.

  “Hella Stella,” he murmurs, sending warm currents through me. “I have to go. Call me when you wake up in the morning.” Eyes half-lidded, I nod into my pillow, still smiling dreamily, completely unafraid of what tomorrow will bring.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Four weeks later Sam parks the wagon at the foot of Jeanie’s old drive. We keep low to the ground, moving along the edge of the wood. Zoey’s a shadow at my heels, and Sam’s close behind her. Outstretched branches catch and pluck at my hoodie. It’s a half hour before the sun breaks over the horizon. You’d think sneaking around in the small hours of the morning would have me clutching Sam. It doesn’t. Thanks to Shane, I don’t wonder anymore.

  Three weeks and six days ago Shane found six case files for missing girls in the warehouse where old police records are stored. One of them was Betty Balco’s; all were from the 1930s. All girls were taken from the Old Norse Trail or in the woods near their homes. Shane was right: There were suspects never made public. One was a history teacher. The other was a naturalist working for the forestry division in Blackdog State Park. Both could have known the Norse story, and both hiked Old Norse Trail frequently. The investigating detective was so certain of their guilt that he spent weeks trailing them, waiting to catch them in the act. He never did.