by Hannah Reed
“I’m staying with you two,” she said, taking up a position behind Holly as I claimed the lead. Patti had said the same thing in my backyard about coming along, right before she reversed directions and backed out, but this time she seemed to mean it. No way was Patti going to miss an opportunity like this, whatever “this” turned out to be.
Even though we still had time before dark, I was relieved when we crossed the wooden bridge to the other side of the river and into the clearing where The Lost Mile began, leaving the semi-darkness of the trees’ canopy behind us for a few final rays of sunshine. We were on higher ground with the fog behind us, but I knew we’d have to deal with it again on the way back.
Not an encouraging prospect. We had to get going.
“What are you doing?” Holly asked when I stopped to scan the tree line.
“Looking for my swarm. They have to be close by.”
Holly groaned.
Patti added her two cents. “Who cares about a stupid bunch of bees when we should be investigating a possible shooting incident?”
“Exactly,” Holly agreed, just to agree with anything nonbee related.
Patti marched past us without a backward glance, proving that curiosity can outweigh caution under the right conditions.
“Wait for us,” Holly called. “We should stick together.”
We caught up and followed close behind Patti. She stopped every few minutes to scan the woods through her binoculars. Then she began moving ahead fast, on a mission to infiltrate the lowly Distorter rag sheet, ready to face anything to get her story.
I grabbed my sister’s arm.
“What?” Holly said, trying to shake free from my grip.
“You’re on your own, Patti,” I said, holding my sister back.
“My allergies are starting to kick up,” Patti called back. “That happens every time I go into the woods. I’ll only go a little farther. If anything happens, I’ll yell for you.” With that, she disappeared down the path like a bolt of lightening.
Holly wiggled into a contorted position, spun around, and broke my grip. “We have to stay together. What’s wrong with you?”
“There they are.” I pointed out the clump of bees in a dead white birch about halfway up its bare branches. My original idea had been to locate them, snip off the branch where they clung, and carry them home. I’d have to revise the plan.
They were too far up off the ground to reach.
Holly spotted them and gurgled like a drowning woman.
Five
I tipped my head back and eyed up the situation. The white birch was totally dead with large holes drilled into it that could only have been made by a pileated woodpecker. But the trunk seemed solid enough in spite of all the holes. “We’ll have to come back tomorrow morning,” I said. “With a ladder.”
“We?” Holly whimpered.
“You and me.”
“Quit including me in your bee problems. IOH (I’m Outta Here).”
I grabbed her again and refused to let go, even when she pulled the same move she’d used on me in the past and wrestled me into a headlock.
“You’re the one who wanted a partnership,” I croaked through the clench, working to break it, “when all I wanted was a loan and monthly installments.”
“I wanted a partnership in the grocery store, not in the bee stuff.”
“You don’t get to choose. You’re either in all the way or you aren’t in at all. Let me go!”
Holly released me so abruptly, I lurched forward.
“I hate when you do that,” I said. “I’m telling Mom.”
“Oh right, Squealy. Like she’d care.”
“What are you? Twelve?”
“NC (No Comment),” my sister said, starting to laugh. Pretty soon we were both grinning, on good terms again.
“Let’s go back to your house,” Holly said. “I’m getting cold.”
“We better wait for Patti. She won’t go far.”
“Of course. You can’t abandon your best friend. But I can.”
“I have the flashlight and you aren’t getting it.” I waved it in front of her, snatching it back when she made a grab for it.
“Should we follow her?” Holly said. “Hasn’t she been gone awhile now?”
I slid down the trunk of the tree my bees had chosen, tucking my knees against my chest. “I’m waiting here.”
“What about the bees?” Holly looked up.
“What about them?”
“What if they attack?”
“It’s not sunny and warm anymore. They’re sleeping.” Which wasn’t exactly true. Most beekeepers, myself included, believed bees didn’t sleep at all. But Stanley Peck insisted he could hear his bees snoring. Whatever the case, Holly bought my reassurance and slid down next to me.
“I can’t believe Lauren Kerrigan came back to Moraine,” I said.
“I never really knew her,” Holly said. “I was a freshman that year.”
I nodded in understanding.
The three years between Holly and me had seemed like an enormously wide age gap during our teens. We hadn’t really gotten to know each other until recently, and now the difference in ages didn’t matter one tiny bit. What’s three years in the scheme of things? But back then it was huge.
“I remember how long you were grounded,” Holly said. “And how the lawyers said you weren’t supposed to talk about what happened, even with your friends. And how you had to go to court and testify. What a bummer. Did anybody ever figure out why she ran over Wayne Jay two times?”
I shook my head. “No. She was so drunk when it happened, she was lucky she didn’t die from alcohol poisoning.”
“What a horrible thing to go through.”
“I can’t believe that emaciated woman in my candle-making class was Lauren Kerrigan. I wouldn’t have recognized her in a million years. Why didn’t she identify herself to me?”
“Afraid to, I bet. Maybe she came into the store planning to greet you, or thinking you’d recognize her. When you didn’t, she chickened out.”
“That makes sense. And Rita didn’t want to force the issue.”
“Exactly. She was letting Lauren take as much time as she needed to adjust.”
“I have so many questions. Bullet point number one: Did she just get out of prison?”
“Probably,” Holly guessed.
Sixteen years had gone by since Lauren was dealt a life sentence, which everybody knew wasn’t really for life but long enough to count as forever when you’re eighteen years old. “Bullet point number two: Why come back now? And three: Where is she right this minute?”
“She didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Holly said, stating the obvious answer to bullet point number two.
“She got drunker and drunker that night,” I said, remembering remarkably well considering how many years had passed. “She started arguing with T. J., saying he didn’t care about her enough. Then she ran off. None of us even tried to stop her.”
“You can’t blame yourself for what she did.” Holly sighed loudly. Feeling more generous toward my sister, I picked a burdock burr from her hair and flicked it away.
“It’s getting dark,” she said, looking around. “Are we totally insane or just plain stupid?”
“Lantern Man never hurt anybody.”
“But he vandalized property.”
“That could have been a teenage prank that got out of hand.”
Holly shook her head. “No way. He exists. What were you guys doing in The Lost Mile that night, anyway?”
“The only reason we came here was because T. J. and Hunter started talking tough about how we weren’t afraid of things that didn’t exist, and some of the other kids dared us to walk through.”
“How dumb was that to actually go?”
“The dumb part was bringing booze with us. Lauren had her own personal flask of vodka.”
“I remember you guys went in right after Lantern Man’s first attack.”
“It could
have been a prank by other kids,” I repeated, not really believing it.
“Yeah, right,” my sister said.
What had happened was this:
• During my last year in high school, a group of sixth graders had decided to camp in The Lost Mile.
• Late that night, while sitting around a campfire, they spotted a beam of light coming toward them, swinging back and forth as though someone was carrying a lantern.
• As the light came closer, they shouted out, but nobody answered. The light paused, then continued coming.
• They heard snarling like an angry wild animal.
• The kids panicked and ran out of the woods, leaving their gear behind.
• The next day when they went back to their campsite, the camping equipment had been destroyed. And the tent and sleeping bags had been slashed to shreds.
• Whether the destruction was caused by claws or a very sharp knife, nobody every found out.
• There had been reports every year since then, tapering off as The Lost Mile’s reputation for malicious hauntings grew and people stopped going in.
“These woods belong to Lantern Man,” Holly said, standing up. “And he doesn’t tolerate trespassers. Let’s go home before he realizes we’re here and comes for us.”
Just before I made up my mind to abandon Patti to her fate, we heard thrashing in the brush to the north.
“OMG (Oh My God)!” Holly shouted, loud enough to wake the dead.
“It’s Patti,” I whispered, not sure at all. “Quit screaming.”
Sure enough, my nosy neighbor came into view just in time to save both of us from totally flipping out, since I’d started feeding on Holly’s anxiety and was on the verge.
“I didn’t find a thing,” P. P. Patti said. “Absolutely nothing. But I’m probably going to break out in a rash from tromping through all this brush. I bet poison ivy is everywhere. One time, I squatted in the woods to tinkle and got it all over my heinie.”
“Thanks for sharing that,” I said, thinking I’d be howling with laughter at the thought of poison ivy all over Patti’s butt if the darkness of the woods wasn’t starting to spook me.
“Remember Hetty Cross?” Holly asked me, bringing back more scary memories. “That time she caught us on her property?”
“Where was that?” Patti asked.
“Across that way.” Holly pointed up the logging road and a little to the north. “When we were kids, we used to call her the Witch. I could run faster than Story, so I always got away. But she grabbed Story once.”
“What did she do to you?” Patti asked me.
“She hauled me off her property by my ear.” I could picture the Witch as vividly as if it had happened yesterday. “And warned me never to come back or she’d make stew meat of me.”
Holly laughed. Patti cackled.
“Have you ever been pulled by your ear?” I wanted to know. “It really, really hurts. Quit laughing.”
“After that,” Holly added, “we made sure we avoided the Witch’s property lines whenever we played in the woods. She’s an awful woman. I can’t imagine what her husband has to put up with.”
Hetty’s husband, Norm, did most of the shopping in their household. He was a regular customer at The Wild Clover, so we were on casual small-talk terms, while I hadn’t seen Hetty in the store more than half a dozen times. Which was perfectly fine with me.
An animal howled in the not-so-faraway distance.
“Let’s get out of here,” Holly said. “While we still can.”
“That was just somebody’s dog,” Patti said.
“I’m right with Holly,” I answered back, because very shortly, if we didn’t hightail it out of The Lost Mile immediately, my imagination was going to get as wild as Holly’s. Between the Witch—who still lived nearby—and Lantern Man, my bravado was slipping away.
We stumbled out of The Lost Mile, crossed the bridge, and retraced our steps. After making our way back through the fog and darkness, we walked to the business end of my short, dead-end street, turned left, and ended up on bar stools at Stu’s Bar and Grill.
Right into the middle of major drama.
Six
Saturdays at Stu’s are all-you-can-eat chicken wing nights from four o’clock until ten. The place was hopping. Stu made the best wings on the planet and it wasn’t just my personal opinion. He’s won awards. First he marinates his wings in several different kinds of special secret sauces, then deep fries them until they’re golden brown before heaping them onto steaming plates. Tonight he had three different kinds—BBQ wings, honey mustard wings, and toasted sesame wings.
The three of us couldn’t decide which kind to share. I’d eat any or all of them, so I wasn’t the problem. But Holly and Patti couldn’t seem to agree. Finally, I stepped in and ordered for us.
“A sampler plate of all three kinds,” I said to Stu. He set three Leinie Honey Weiss beers on the bar in front of us and went to fill our wing order. I shoved the lemon wedge down the neck of the bottle and sipped while studying the action.
The bar was busy for two reasons. First, there were the customers who were there because of chicken-wing night. Stu always drew a big crowd for that event. Customers came early, drank enormous quantities of beer, and stayed at least until the clock struck ten when the all-you-can-eat ended.
Second, and more important, the Kerrigans had turned Stu’s Bar and Grill into their unofficial missing-person head-quarter as they organized the hunt for their family member. Kerrigans swarmed the place, equipped with walkie-talkies instead of cell phones, since cell reception could be spotty in our hills and valleys. Lauren’s brothers passed out radios to anybody who stepped forward to help with the hunt.
Lauren’s mother, Rita, walked by me, looking dazed and barely staying upright on her bad knees. I tagged her shoulder.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” I said, not sure of that at all, but wanting to give her as much encouragement and hope as possible.
“Oh, Story, I don’t know. She had terminal colon cancer,” Rita said, which explained Lauren’s deflated, aged appearance and the wig on her head. “She got a medical parole from that women’s correctional place. They do that when a prisoner is close to the end. I was looking into hospice care for her.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “She did look awfully sick when I saw her.”
“You didn’t recognize her. She thought you would. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you in advance, but she made me promise to let her do it her way.”
“We’ll have plenty of time later, once she’s found.”
“I’m afraid she might have done something drastic, like . . .” Rita paused as though she couldn’t bear to go on. Even though she didn’t finish, she didn’t have to. I knew Rita was worried that her daughter had committed suicide. “Coming back to Moraine was a terrible mistake,” she continued. “I could see as soon as she got here yesterday that she was having trouble handling the strain.”
“The search party will find her soon. Look at all the friends who turned out to help.”
“If it isn’t already too late.” Rita licked her lips and spit out the words she feared the most. “What if she used that gun on herself?”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t do that,” I said. “There’s a logical explanation, I’m sure.”
Patti’s eyes were wide like dinner plates and she opened her mouth to start blabbing. I knew exactly what she was about to tell Rita. That we’d heard shots and they might have come from the missing weapon. “We heard—” was all she had time to say, because right then I stepped down from the bar stool and stomped on her foot as hard as I could, considering I was wearing flip-flops.
Patti’s eyes stayed wide and her mouth made a little round circle. “Owwww,” she said, “that hurt. What’s wrong with you? You did that on purpose.”
I glanced over at Rita, but she’d turned away to talk to someone else, and hadn’t noticed our little exchange. I took the opportunity to bark at Pat
ti. “We aren’t going to tell Rita about the gunshots. She’ll only worry more than she is already, if that’s even possible. Promise you won’t say a word to her.”
“Okay,” Patti said, after thinking it over. “You’re right.”
“But one of us should let Johnny Jay know. And it shouldn’t be me.”
“I’ll call the police chief in a little while and inform him personally. Until then, my lips are sealed with superglue.” Patti slid off the bar stool and wandered off where I couldn’t keep an eye and ear on her in case she couldn’t find the glue. I noticed Holly had vacated the seat on the other side of me as soon as the wings were gone and was mingling with the other customers.
Just then the room went so quiet you could hear a single chicken bone drop onto a paper plate. All eyes turned toward the front of the bar.
Our police chief Johnny Jay, decked out in his full uniform, had entered and everybody who hadn’t realized beforehand was suddenly struck with a remembrance of the past—that it was Johnny’s dad who had been killed by Lauren Kerrigan, struck down and run over by her, not just once, but two times.
And here Johnny was, forced to deal with her as a potential victim because of his position in law enforcement, having to decide when to officially step in and do something about her disappearance and possibly get involved in his own organized search party.
I’ve known our police chief since kindergarten, and we’ve gone rounds all the way through high school and beyond. Raptors and rodents would become best friends before Johnny and I learned to tolerate each other. Unfortunately, because of Johnny Jay’s position of power, he got to be the hawk most of the time, leaving me to scamper for cover like a mouse.
How was I to know the big bully (aka major jerk) would become the police chief?
But right now, I actually felt sorry for him. Or at least I could sympathize over his loss.
To preserve his public image, Johnny Jay would play it by the book, wait the allotted time according to textbook rules before making a decision on Lauren Kerrigan’s alleged disappearance. But on a more personal level, I suspected he wouldn’t look too hard for answers. I also wondered if handling this missing-person case was a conflict of interest for Johnny, considering the past. Although it wasn’t like the town had the option of replacing him. Johnny Jay was pretty much it in the way of law enforcement.