The Best American Mystery Stories 2019
Page 19
The wind blew hard outside, rattling the glass left in the windows. She thought she heard something up above her, coming from the hayloft. A board creaking like a sigh.
She pocketed the lighter, picked up the gas can, and headed out, scanning the tree line, looking for the tallest oak. She didn’t know her trees, didn’t know an oak from a maple from an ash, especially now that most of them had their leaves off. She headed for the tallest tree she could see, walking across the big yard, through grass that needed to be cut, so long it was like a hayfield.
She got to the tree and looked around for the girls. Nothing.
“Manda?” she called, keeping her voice low, not wanting to wake up the Caldwells. “Mel? Katie?”
She was there before them. She’d been faster than they’d thought she’d be. Wouldn’t they be impressed? Hannah-beast was fast. Hannah-beast was clever.
She stood next to the tree, fidgeting with the lighter. It made her fingers smell tangy and metallic, like raw metal. She flicked it, watched the flame. They’d see her now as they came. See her and know she had the lighter.
She was like the Statue of Liberty with her torch. She held it up high, her eye on the flame.
I got it.
I found it.
I win.
The acrid lighter-fluid smell filled her nostrils.
But there was something else. Another smell behind it. A campfire smell.
Smoke.
She smelled smoke.
She looked over at the barn and saw flames curling out through the windows, reaching up like long fingers, all the way to the roof.
Her heart jackhammered in her chest.
Had she done this? Had the paper not been out?
No. It had been. She’d made sure.
She stood, frozen. She thought of running, but then the girls would never find her. So she stood and watched from her safe place tucked behind the thick old tree. The lights from the house came on, and Mrs. Caldwell came out, screaming. She tried to run into the burning barn, but Mr. Caldwell was running now too, grabbed her from behind, stopped her.
There was another sound too. Screaming. High pitched and hysterical, from inside the barn.
Animals, Hannah thought at first. There must have been animals in there after all—a horse or cow, a couple of pigs maybe tucked away in a dark corner.
“Ben! Brian!” Mrs. Caldwell called. She fought against Mr. Caldwell, kicking, digging her nails into his arms. “Let me go!”
“For God’s sake, Margaret,” he said. “You can’t go in there.”
“Brian! Ben!” she howled.
The Langs came over from across the street. The barn was completely engulfed in flames now—it seemed to have taken only a minute. Mrs. Caldwell was screaming, sobbing, hysterical, and Mr. Caldwell kept his arms wrapped tight around her. More people came, people from down the street. Sirens started in the distance. Too late now. The VFD boys with their pumper trucks and miles of hose could never save that old barn.
Hannah watched from behind the tree, feeling like she was watching some show on TV, not something from her very own life. The barn roof caved in with a terrible cracking, roaring sound, and Mrs. Caldwell sank to her knees, howling like she was the one on fire.
Then Hannah saw the girls, her girls, coming down the street, twittering and bobbing like a flock of birds. They slowed, all three staring at the burning barn. Manda grabbed Mel’s shoulder, leaned in, said something Hannah couldn’t hear. Then they all ran to the sidewalk in front of the barn, to the group of neighbors gathered there.
Hannah stepped out from behind the tree, waving, trying to get the girls’ attention, not sure if she should run to them or wait right where she was. That was what the note said, to wait. So that’s probably what she was supposed to do?
Mr. Jarvis was there in the circle of men the girls were talking to. The fire was so loud she could make out only snippets.
“I saw her,” she heard Mr. Jarvis say.
Mr. Blakely was there. She heard “Gasoline.”
A lady in a fluffy turquoise bathrobe—it might have been Mrs. Novak?—spoke to the girls grimly. Hannah heard every word this time.
“Benjamin and Brian were sleeping in the hayloft. They do it every Halloween.”
Hannah looked back at the fire, showers of sparks going up and up and away.
It was like hell. Like what she’d imagined hell might be like. That hot. That smoky. That loud.
Then Mel turned toward Hannah’s hiding place by the tree, pointed. Her eyes blazed with the reflection of the fire—devil eyes. “There she is!” she shouted. “She did this!”
Everyone looked her way. Saw the gas can by her feet. The lighter in her hand.
Katie stared, stunned, slack-jawed, but slowly, she reached up her hand and pointed too.
Some of the men, they took a step in Hannah’s direction.
Hannah looked right at Manda, her eyes pleading: Please. Say something. Don’t let them do this to me.
Manda was crying now, crying hard. “But she—” she began, and Mel clamped a hand down on Manda’s shoulder, held tight with a clawlike grip that would surely leave a bruise. Manda looked down at the ground, then back to Hannah. “Yes, that’s her,” she said through her tears. “That’s Hannah-beast.”
And Hannah, she turned and ran.
2016
It had been Mel who’d set the fire. Amanda should have stopped her. She should have done something—actually fucking stood up to her for once. Now, as an adult, she couldn’t believe how much power Mel had had over her. What had she been so afraid of? Being shunned from the lunch table? Having nasty notes left in her locker? It all seemed so trivial compared to what had happened to those Caldwell boys, what had happened to Hannah.
Over the years, Amanda had told herself that she didn’t think Mel would really do it, that she’d been sure it was just another of Mel’s grand schemes that would come to nothing. Like the way she said one day they’d go to the mall and hide in the bathroom with their feet up during closing time; then they’d sneak back out and have the whole mall to themselves, and they’d get skateboards from the sporting goods store and go up and down the mall, eating all the candy they wanted from the Sweet Spot, then play Ms. Pac-Man all night at the arcade. Mel would go on and on about everything they’d do that night at the mall, but Amanda knew it would never happen. Amanda had told herself the barn fire would be like that.
So when Mel came sprinting out of the barn, grinning wildly, saying she’d done it, Amanda was sure she was just fooling around. Until she saw the smoke.
She could have run in then, tried to put it out. Or gone and pounded on the Caldwells’ door and told them to call the fire department quick. She could have done something.
Instead, she saw the smoke, the orange glow of fire from deep inside the barn, and she ran like the coward she was, the coward she would always be.
She took off right behind Mel and Katie. They were laughing, giddy, and hadn’t Amanda laughed too? Sure she had. It was terrible, but it was also exciting and crazy, like nothing she’d ever done. Thrilling. They’d had no idea the Caldwell boys were sleeping up in the hayloft. The plan was to make people think Hannah had burned down the barn. Get her in a little trouble. Not have the whole town think she was a murderer. Not to be murderers themselves.
The pumpkin watched, smiling stupidly at her, looking more like Hannah than ever.
I love you, Manda Panda.
Amanda remembered feeling Hannah’s warm breath on her neck the night she’d slept over, snuggled up against Amanda in her twin bed.
Go to sleep, Amanda had said that night, irritated that Hannah was there, that she was so pathetic and desperate, but also a little thrilled by the power she had over this girl, this girl who loved her so completely. Who called her Manda Panda, which was incredibly stupid but kind of sweet.
Amanda had hated it and loved it all at the same time. Which was the way she’d felt about Hannah, wasn’t it?
The candle flickered, making the pumpkin seem to open its eyes wider, looking frightened, desperate.
Please, Manda. Don’t let them do this to me.
“Enough already,” Amanda said, picking up the carving knife, digging it into the pumpkin’s left eye, determined to change its shape, to make it look less Hannah-like.
In the darkness and silence, she worked to make the eyes more triangular, angrier, more like one of Jim’s devil-faced pumpkins.
When she finished with the eyes, she stepped back. It was no good. It just looked like a furious version of Hannah leering back at her.
You can’t make me go away this time.
She picked up the knife again, thinking she’d fix it—change the nose and mouth, banish Hannah-beast once and for all.
She froze, sure she’d heard a giggle from somewhere behind her, deep in the dark center of the house.
She listened hard, and it was not laughter she heard this time but the clip-clap sound of boot heels moving across the floor. The sound of her old pink cowboy boots—the boots her mother had shamed her into giving to Hannah.
The boots Hannah had been wearing that night.
The boots look good on you, Hannah.
“Hello?” she called. She waited, knife clutched in her hand, heart pounding in her ears.
“Hannah?” she asked, choking out the name.
The jack-o’-lantern grinned, seemed to give her an evil wink. I’m right here. I have been all along.
1982
Sometimes the best place to hide was right in plain sight.
She sat, cross-legged, in the dark gazebo right in the middle of town, the same spot where she’d been just hours before, trading candy with the girls, taking all their peanut butter cups. The floor of the gazebo was littered with the wrappers they’d left behind.
She sat for so long her legs turned to pins and needles.
The sirens went on and on. It seemed everyone in town was up and awake, walking the streets, talking. They talked over each other, shouted across the street to friends and neighbors.
Did you hear, did you hear? Bad fire at the Caldwells’ place. Both their boys dead. They were sleeping in the barn. It was that Hannah Talbott girl.
She came to my house tonight, dressed all crazy, acting like some kind of animal. Threatened my dog. Screamed right in my face.
Mental, that one is.
What was that crazy costume she was wearing, anyway?
Said she was some kind of beast.
She was all over town, wicked girl running wild. Broke into the Jarvises’ garage, stole a crowbar. Used it to get a gas can from the Blakelys’ shed. Busted up the shed while she was at it. Then she walked right on over to the Caldwells’ place, soaked that old barn in gasoline, torched it. Those poor boys never had a chance.
She could tell, of course. She could tell, but who was going to believe her? Who ever believed a girl like Hannah? A girl who’d been caught with a gas can and a lighter.
That’s her, Manda had said. That’s Hannah-beast.
She was still in her costume, now dirty, stinking of smoke and gasoline.
Girls like that, they’re going straight to hell. You stay away from them unless you want to get burned.
Her face itched, didn’t feel like her face at all. The wig was on crooked. The cape was torn.
She looked up, saw a rope dangling down—an old piece of clothesline maybe—looped around the overhead beam. The rope that had held the ghost piñata earlier. The little kids had swung at it with a stick, the ghost bobbing, dancing in circles until it was hit dead-on, torn open, candy flying out, the little kids all pushing each other, scrambling to collect the most pieces.
Hannah stood, reaching for the rope, hands shaking a little. She gave it a tug like she was ringing an invisible bell.
I ring but I’m not a phone.
The rope was looped over one of the rafters, tied tight with a string of knots. She gripped it with both hands and swung, feet drifting over the refuse of the evening—the clear cellophane of Manda’s Smarties, the bright scraps from Mel’s Tootsie Pops, the wrappers from all those Hershey’s bars Katie had eaten.
She was her own piñata, swinging. The rope held her weight.
She climbed up on the low wall of the gazebo, cape flapping in the breeze like she really was some kind of superhero about to take flight. The cowboy boots were slippery and she had to lean quite a bit to reach the center, but she kept her balance. She made a careful slipknot in the rope. Her hands didn’t feel like her hands at all.
It was like it was some other girl. Like she was watching some other version of herself in some far-off place tie the knot.
A ghost of a girl.
A beast of a girl.
Hannah-beast unleashed.
The real Hannah was home, tucked up all safe and warm in her bed like a good girl, right where she belonged, a girl who wasn’t going to hell. A girl who had a best friend named Manda who’d given her a pair of special pink boots, boots that fit so perfectly it was like she and Manda were one.
The candy wrappers got caught in the breeze, skittered across the floor below her, empty and forgotten.
Hannah looped the rope around her neck over the rainbow wig, over the pink boa. She heard the girls’ voices in her head as she jumped off the wall—Hannah-beast takes flight!—swinging, flying, legs dangling over the floor.
Say boo!
2016
Amanda held her breath, listening to the footsteps come up behind her. They were real; she was sure of it. Not born of paranoia and too much wine, right? She glanced down at the pumpkin, her knife now turning the blocky teeth into pointed ones, giving it a vampire grin.
Hannah-beast’s a real monster, that’s for sure. Be careful, or she’ll eat you up!
Amanda looked up, out across the kitchen at the window over the sink, and saw the reflection in it: the dim kitchen lit only by the candle in the jack-o’-lantern; herself, hunched over before it, whittling away; and a figure behind her—a girl with a blue face, a bright clown wig, a pink feather boa, a silver cape.
She blinked, but it did not go away, just came closer, closer still.
I love you, Manda Panda.
She could hear the creature breathing as it drew near, could smell smoke and gasoline.
Amanda could not move, could not speak or scream.
She was twelve years old again, looking at Hannah as she stood with the gas can by her feet, the lighter in her hand, staring desperately at Amanda: Please. Don’t let them do this to me.
But Amanda had only pointed. That’s her. That’s Hannah-beast.
“Boo!” Hannah roared in her ear, right behind her now.
“Go away!” Amanda screamed as she spun. They were the words she and the other girls had said so many times to Hannah when she followed them around like some pathetic dog at school, when she sat down at their lunch table, when she showed up at Amanda’s house, wanting to ride bikes, wanting to sleep over again. Why can’t you just go away?
Amanda plunged her carving knife deep into Hannah-beast’s belly, shouting, “Go the fuck away!”
But the creature did not disappear like smoke, like the ghost she should have been.
Amanda’s hands were warm and sticky with blood.
Hannah-beast looked down at the knife in her belly, slack-jawed, stupid.
When she looked up, Amanda saw her, really saw her.
And in that moment, she realized Hannah had won.
“No!” Amanda cried, the word a wailing sob. “No, no, nooo!”
Erin looked so surprised, so puzzled, as she reached down and touched the knife, like she couldn’t believe it was real. Amanda
could see traces of cat whiskers beneath the blue face paint.
“Mom?”
JOYCE CAROL OATES
The Archivist
from Boulevard
1.
He would protect me. He promised.
Kissing the scar at my hairline. Smoothing the hair back, that he might press his lips lightly against the scar. Making me shiver.
He would take measurement of me. Establish a record. The size of my skull, the length of my spine, the size of my hands and feet (bare). Height, weight. Color of skin.
Then taking my hand. Pressing it between his legs where he was fattish, swollen like ripe, rotting fruit. Pressed, rubbed. When I tried to pull away he gripped my hand tighter.
Don’t pretend to be innocent, “Vio-let!” You dirty girl.
Sometimes he called me Sleeping Beauty. (Which had to be one of his jokes, I was no beauty.)
Sometimes he called me Snow White.
“I am ‘Sandman.’ Do I have a sandpaper tongue?”
Seven months. When I was fourteen.
If it was abuse, as they charged, it did not seem so, usually. It was something that I could recognize as punishment.
Each time was the first time. Each time, I would not remember what happened to me, what was done to me. And so there was only a single time, and that time the first time as well as the last.
Each time was a rescue. Waking to see the face of the one who had rescued me, and his eyes that shone in triumph beneath grizzled eyebrows. Sharp-bracketed mouth and stained teeth in a smile of happiness.
Vio-let Rue! Time to wake up, dear.
Mr. Sandman was the teacher who’d sighted me lost in the ninth-grade corridor, when I was in seventh grade. When I’d first come to Port Oriskany as a transfer student. The teacher with the grizzled eyebrows and strange staring eyes who’d seemed to recognize me. As if (already) there was a secret understanding between us.