Nursery Rhymes 4 Dead Children

by Lee Thompson

  As if matching my thoughts, Morgan wiped her eyes, and her eight-year-old hands squeezed the doll’s neck. “My mom and dad coming back?

  Part Three: Angel bones

  Chapter 20

  “So, what did she say?” I asked, keeping stride with Duncan to the end of the driveway. He’d warmed to Angela quickly and whatever excuse she’d given him for being in the woods had made perfect sense to him.

  “That’s none of your business. But let me give you a piece of advice before you leave.”

  “All right.”

  Duncan rested a hand on his pistol, elbow tight to his side. He frowned at the vehicles spattered in blood. The sun sank farther behind the trees. “I knew Pat most my life. I knew your father as well.”

  “Okay.”

  “I respected your father, until you know…”

  “Until he left the church.”

  Before he admitted to sleeping with an under-aged girl.

  Duncan nodded, played with a button on his shirt. “I was there when he baptized your brother and you. He baptized my daughter, Angela.”

  I lifted my hands, confused for a moment. “She’s your daughter?”

  “No. Not her.” He tilted his head to the side. “My angel was real trouble. Typical kid, you know, always trying to test the limits.”

  “Was?”

  Duncan’s lip trembled and his eyes glowed wet. “She ran away a week ago. I guess hearing that girl in there say her name was Angela, it kinda brings it back when I was just getting a grip on it. My Angela hasn’t even called. What kinda shit is that? Kids, huh?”

  The dead girl with the door over her empty chest, tried to reach for him from the porch. I patted the big cops shoulder, not sure how he’d take it, but unable to stop myself nonetheless. “Have you tried looking for her?”

  “To what end? I can’t force her to come home. It’d only make things worse. The shitty part is that I told her not to come back. I wanted her to learn a lesson. I guess I’m the one who had to learn it.”

  Two Angela’s stood on the porch, the redhead and the young brunette. The living one stroked the dead one’s hair and pulled the kid’s head to her chest. Angela smiled at me and her lips moved—words taking flight on the wind, blue butterflies with spotted yellow wings. They swarmed around Duncan, but he couldn’t see them.

  The state trooper sighed. “I’ve got to get you out of here. A social worker is on her way over to pick up the Andrew’s kid. You mind giving Miss Forte a ride back into town, or wherever she’s going?”

  Angela stepped from the porch, dress batting at her slim thighs. She brushed hair out of her eyes as she approached, carrying a black clad leather book. A tarnished brass bracelet I hadn’t noticed her wearing before jingled at her wrist.

  You know why, right? Because the times you’ve spent with her she was naked or sucking on your pistol or saving someone’s life. Maybe you should pay more attention to what she’s saying and what she’s doing.

  I offered my hand to Duncan and the older man shook it and said, “I like your family, McDonnell. I’m sorry about your brother, too. Not sure I mentioned it.”

  Tell him where his daughter is.

  Angela touched my shoulder. I jumped. Her voice came out like honey, rich and sticky. “Tell him.” She held a book, like a photo album, and handed it to the cop.

  Duncan flinched as she pushed the book in his face. “What’s this?”

  “John has a secret he’s dying to get off his chest. Tell him. No more secrets. They only bleed men dry.” Arms crossed over her chest, she blew hair off her nose. It was almost cute, but I couldn’t stop shuddering.

  Duncan opened the book. I leaned forward and my stomach twisted at the sight of black and white photos as the cop flipped through page after page. Another page and he sighed. I hung my head, forced it back up, to meet the gaze of the girl on the porch. She stared back at all of us from the picture, from the porch. Duncan flipped another page and Brandy Miller smiled out, trapped in time, from her high school picture.

  Fuck me.

  Duncan slammed the book shut and a puff of dust escaped. He sneezed, his eyes wet. “Where did you get this?” He stepped closer to Angela.

  “In the house. It’s Pat’s. Ask John about your little girl.”

  Duncan’s head turned, the muscles in his thick neck tight against the skin, face red. “You know something about Angie?”

  I brought a hand up, afraid Duncan might pull his pistol. Crows cawed in the trees. A buzzard flew high overhead, a blotch of black against the sky. “It’s a long story.”

  “Do you know where my baby is?”

  My teeth hurt. I forced the muscles in my jaw to relax, then the rest of my body.

  We’re all fucked now. Pat doesn’t have to pay because he’s dead, but the rest of us were a part of burying them. Even me—for letting it happen. Stupid. I should have made a stand then. I shouldn’t have walked away to play Nancy Drew.

  The wind stirred a few dying leaves about our feet.

  “I can run Angela back to the Johnston estate and come back out here. I’ll show you.”

  Duncan sobbed, spittle on his lips, mucus running from the tip of his nose. Seeing his brokenness, the hope he’d kept alive whither and die, hurt my chest. “She’s not… Christ. She’s not hurt too bad, is she?” But his face shown his grief, his suspicion, and the question was pointless, because he knew.

  I cleared my throat but the lump stayed tight in the muscle. “I’ll show you. I’m sorry.”

  Duncan nodded, looked at the house and I followed his gaze. Morgan held a coloring book, stood on the porch, confusion plain on her face. “I’d rather you took me to her right now. But I need to be here for this kid.” He shook his head and ran a thick hand over his nose. “My girl is dead, isn’t she? You guys found her here.”

  I shifted my feet, not wanting to tell him the whole story, afraid of the repercussions. I stared at the book a moment, then at the girl’s ghost. “Yeah. We found her yesterday. I started searching for missing kids to try and identify her. It’s a long story.”

  “Why did Pat have a picture of her, you think?”

  Angela put a hand on my shoulder. Her soft touch loosened something inside me and I wanted to cry with Duncan, for kid’s lost lives, lost happiness, lost chances. “You can ask the mayor. He knew some stuff about Pat. And he was there when I saw your Angie.”

  The big cop appeared to fold in on himself, shrinking as he dug his elbows into his stomach and buried his head in his hands. I waited for him to curse Pat’s name, tear the book in two, pull his pistol and eat the barrel. But Duncan only sat on the ground and wiped his eyes as he flipped the book open to the picture of his daughter and traced the line of her jaw with his index finger. She knelt beside her father and cried with him until their voices grew heavy with sorrow.

  I grabbed Angela’s arm and shoved her toward the Jeep.

  * * *

  As we turned left on 82, I looked from the blood-spattered hood to Angela. “I’m going to have to stop and wash this thing off.”

  She ran her finger over the dusty dash and grinned. I liked that she’d shielded Morgan’s eyes as her parents died, played with the kid inside, diverting some of the girl’s questions. I knew it wouldn’t be easy for Morgan, but didn’t know how I could help.

  I rested my right hand on the emergency brake between us, my mind trying to work over which questions I needed answers to most. We flew past the hospital.

  “What did you tell Duncan? How did you know to be there?”

  She put her hand on top of mine and smiled. I jerked my hand away afraid that if she kept touching me we’d get lost in something primal and I didn’t want to hurt Cat anymore. Or myself with stupid choices. “How did you happen to be there? I know it wasn’t chance. You’re following me around. Why?”

  “I already told you. I am here to help you. Don’t you feel better since you told Mr. Duncan about his Angie?”

  “A little. But stop cha
nging the subject. Help me how?”

  “To watch it blossom.”

  “What?”

  She licked her lips. “The girl likes me.”

  “Angie?”

  “Her, too. I was talking about Morgan.”

  “God, that poor kid.” My mind tumbled over too many things, too many feelings. I’d never stopped and looked at a kid other than Ethan and wondered what the future held for them, what joys, what heartaches. “She’s going to end up in a foster home now.”

  “No, that’s not her fate.”

  I turned my head as we passed Main. “How do you know so much?”

  “Think of me as your guardian angel.”

  “You were there when this all started. Dancing around in the woods like you were some type of nymph. Do you know who hit me that night? Was it Pat? Did he kill those girls? I want to believe that but it doesn’t feel right. They haven’t left like I thought they would the whole time we were in Pat’s house, you know, after.”

  “Everything will fall into place when the proper time comes.”

  The tires hummed as they hit a new section of concrete, the cab full of hot, still air. I rolled down the window, took a deep breath. “I feel like you’re playing a game here.”

  “I don’t play games. Ask Michael. He has a lot he can tell you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Do you appreciate anything?”

  I slowed the Jeep for the turn onto Cemetery Road. I touched the key at my neck, pulled it free and rubbed it without realizing it. Angela whistled.

  My brow furrowed as we sped up the road, my hands tight on the wheel, knuckles white, the manor a black blight surrounded by trees and falling leaves. “You saw the dead girls, too. You touched Officer Duncan’s daughter as if she were real.”

  “She is real. And you don’t know what you’re headed for yet. It is a hard road, Johnathan. A very difficult one. Some things must be sacrificed for the greater good. I hope you’ll be able to trust me when the time comes.” She frowned and some of her radiance fell away. I felt like telling her a joke to just see her smile again, and the impulse brought drops of shame with it. I forced an image of Cat into my head, but it blurred around the edges. Angela said, “The three of you stand at the veil where darkness and light meet. You’re going to have to be brave, Johnathan. And honest with yourself. Let me see the key.”

  I wrapped my hand around it, wanting to protect it from her, from everything, as we passed the cemetery and the hill steepened. Mike’s car wasn’t in the drive. I made a mental note to stop by the hospital later, after I went back and showed Duncan the full extent of his misery.

  Pulling up to the steps of the manor, I kept the Jeep in drive, and tucked the key back inside my shirt. “Go on. Get out. I’m sure I’ll see you later.”

  “Talk to Michael.”

  “I will if they don’t throw me in prison.”

  “Does the thought terrify you?”

  I wiped my lips and noticed they hurt, chapped. My eyes stung from exhaustion. “I should have said something sooner. Should have brought it all right out in the open. I’ll have to take my lumps. I deserve them. But you want to know what terrifies me? Not knowing what you want.”

  Angela opened the door and stepped out. She blew me a kiss. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  * * *

  Driving back past the cemetery, I coughed into the crook of my elbow and stared at the back of the doublewide. The place had become a burden—the bills, the relationship, my self-centeredness. The past week felt like it had cut me deep and I knew that most of my life I’d taken things for granted, saw the world through a narrow lens that seldom reached out past what affected me. Thinking of Morgan and Brandy, and the restless dead who still lacked peace, brought tears to my eyes, it made me want to fight for them in a way I’d never experienced before.

  I pulled into the driveway and parked behind Cat’s car. Planning to tell her to pick up a gift for Brandy and a toy for Morgan, then I could get back out to Duncan.Weariness settled into my bones as I climbed out, trying to sort through what else I needed to do, questions that needed answered, people who needed an ear I’d never offered before.

  Wylie blowing Pat’s hand apart kept playing through my head, turned my stomach.

  I stopped on the back steps.

  Drops of blood spattered the doors casing. I threw it open. “Cat?”

  When she didn’t answer I rushed into the living room. Quiet, the house seemed to speak its secrets through the leaves sliding across the back lawn. “Cat?” I checked our bedroom, then Ethan’s. I cracked my knuckles, blackness spilling into the edge of my vision. I pulled the phone and called Connie. She answered on the second ring, the tone of her voice worried and bird-like. “Hey, John. Did something happen to Wylie?”

  “Have you heard from Cat?”

  “No. Did something happen to Wylie? I saw them tow his truck by the house a minute ago. I was just about to call you.”

  “Yeah. Something happened. You haven’t seen Cat? I came home and there’s some blood on the back door.”

  “Maybe Ethan fell down and she took him to Our Lady.”

  “Her car is here. I thought maybe she called you to run her up there for something like that.”

  “I haven’t talked to her in two days.”

  “Who would she call?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I was asking myself.” I looked around the living room. Through our open bedroom door I caught a glimpse of my pistol in its holster, lying on the dresser. I walked in and grabbed it, kept the phone pressed between my ear and shoulder. “Maybe Cat hurt herself. But I don’t know who she’d call to come and pick her up. She’s never really made any friends here.”

  “Is it any wonder why?”

  “What?”

  “She’s standoffish. She doesn’t let people near her. I’ve always wondered why that is.”

  “It’s part of her personality.”

  “Maybe.” Connie sighed and I could picture her in her kitchen, looking out over the alley that ran next to the pizza place, where me and Wylie and Mike used to sit and smoke cigarettes while our father prepared a sermon or cheated on our mother. “What happened to Wylie, John?”

  “I’ll tell you later. I have a ton of stuff going on. I think I’m in major trouble. I don’t know if praying helps. But say a prayer for everyone.”

  “Tell me what—”

  “I’ve got to run to the hospital and see if Cat and Ethan are there. I love you.”

  “John, I want—”

  I hung up and grabbed the phone book from beneath the kitchen cabinet, carried it out to the Jeep and flipped through it until I found the number for the State Police Station. I hoped that Duncan didn’t think that I was trying to dodge him, avoid showing him where his little girl’s body lay shattered.

  Chapter 21

  Nurses bounded down the halls past me. Their eyes looked dead, faces grim, so used to death and heartache. I didn’t know how long someone could handle the pressure of other people’s pain or if it could transfer over, make your own life hell. I didn’t envy them.

  I asked after Cat at the emergency room desk. An older woman in a purple smock checked and shook her head. When she leaned forward, her thick lips parted and she put a hand over her chest, glanced over my shoulder. I looked behind me and saw Duncan’s daughter, the other three girls behind her, brows knitted. The old woman hit the floor in a heap, a soft, fleshy slap, a crack of bone. It seemed she’d seen the dead as well, and she’d fainted, but her fall looked nasty. Someone yelled down the hall and rushed toward her; a black man in a similar smock, his blue, tight around his shoulders. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a black man in Division. The orderly scooped his hands under the woman’s armpits and sat her in the chair behind the desk. He threw me a look, brow knitted like the dead girls’ and shook his head.

  I cleared my throat and asked if she was going to be alright. The orderly nodded without loo
king at me. I asked him, “Do you know Catherine Edmund?”

  The man held onto the woman’s shoulders. “If you hold on a minute, sir, I’ll find someone who can help you. You wanna hand me that phone there?” He pulled one hand off her shoulder and pointed. I moved around the desk and pulled the receiver free, handed it over. “You wanna hit extension three for me?”

  It was clear that the guy couldn’t reach it and hold the unconscious woman at the same time. I wanted to leave them to their own problems and find someone who would know if Cat was in and where I could find her. But I pushed the buttons. The black man nodded. “Thank you.” He spoke into the receiver and I stepped back onto the main floor, looked up the hall into the heart of Our Lady and saw Mike pacing back and forth in front of his mother’s room, dressed in a black suit coat, like he’d come to a church, or the parlor of the dead.

  I stared at Mike’s designer clothes, realizing the outfit probably cost more than my furniture. It could drive you crazy sometimes, envying your friends—what they have and you don’t. I took a deep breath, let it out.

  I waved, expecting him to be as happy to see me as I was him.

  Mike stared, frowning.

  The man hung up the phone and said, “Who you looking for?”

  “Catherine Edmund. Have you seen her this afternoon?”

  “No.” He pointed his chin at the front entrance. “Try the main desk.”

  I nodded, thanked him, and pulled the fear back to look at what lay beneath. I kept seeing blood on the forest floor, blood on the house door, smoke in the cemetery, darkness in the manor.

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  “I think so.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. The poor, beaten dead were gone. I let out a long breath. My mind turned over an image of Angela rising like mist from the ditch outside Pat’s house; a flash of blood on the doorstep of my own. I wondered if Angela had left it there, if it was supposed to mean something significant, part of whatever game she played. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, thirsty. “I think she saw a ghost.”