The May Queen Murders

by Sarah Jude

  Milo wistfully looked into treetops. “Even after you’ve left Rowan’s Glen, it stays in your soul.”

  My mouth fell open. “What?”

  “Our mama was Glen born,” he admitted.

  Was this what Emmie had warned him not to tell us? It could be only the beginning of secrets the Entwhistles carried in their hearts. I moved along the boundary, stopping to study each tree. My chest felt caved in, a rumble that began with my heart fracturing, grief renewed.

  Emmie added, “Mama left after the last May Queen, Terra MacAvoy, was killed. You can’t stay after evil’s touched your blood.”

  Your blood.

  My blood.

  How much were they like me, like Heather and Rook? Did they know how to make firefly lanterns or predict a bad winter by when the sycamore shed its bark? Maybe their mama tried to breed it out of them by giving her children an outsider daddy. She could’ve gone anywhere, and yet she raised them close to the Glen.

  “Mama always said not to go back ’cause all you’d find in Rowan’s Glen were lies and death. Not far off, was she?” Emmie remarked.

  “So you heard of Birch Markle?” I asked.

  Milo nodded. “Our mama told us the story. But someone like Heather comes ’round maybe once or twice in your life. You don’t turn that away, no matter if you’re scared.”

  Heather had mentioned being scared. Not of Milo. Of something in the Glen? He was her sanctuary. They’d even built a haven in the woods where they thought no one’d find it. As mystical this place was, a hollowness crept through me. She was reckless. She turned her back on Mamie’s stories. The omens had warned her. She’d ignored them.

  She didn’t want to believe.

  She didn’t want to be part of the Glen.

  “We’re gonna catch him,” I said.

  Emmie crossed her arms. She looked so much like her brother in the face, in the swagger of her gait—her skirt wanting to shimmy down her plank-straight hips. All she needed was a cigarette glued to her lips.

  She scoffed. “Catching him don’t bring back Heather. Can’t bring back Terra MacAvoy. She’s bones by now.”

  Milo put his arm around his sister. They edged away to leave the clearing, but Rook hopped up and called to them.

  “Hey, before you go, just curious what your mama’s name was,” he said.

  Milo glanced back. “Laurel.”

  He turned away, and together, he and Emmie retreated from Heather’s hideaway to cut through the trees, not bothering to stick to a path. They were twin cryptids, creatures of no classification, visible for only a few steps before the underbrush folded around them.

  I picked up one of the jewel-colored pillows and sat. Once I was home, I’d bundle up under Mamie’s blanket and drink her tea. Praying my nightmares about teeth and knives and bloody skin would stop for a few hours.

  Rook took a spot beside me with his knees tucked up. The woods were muted, no crackles of unseen squirrels or deer moving between trees. Even the birds hushed. Perhaps in mourning for the girl who used to dance here.

  I laid my head on Rook’s shoulder. “What’d you think of what Milo and Emmie said?”

  “That they know too much about the old May Queen,” Rook answered.

  “What if—” Bringing the words to sound meant unleashing an idea, a terrible idea. “The MacAvoys ain’t in the Glen anymore. Do you think they’re Terra MacAvoy’s kin?”

  Rook gave it a moment of consideration. “If they are, they’d have a hell of a grudge against the Glen.”

  My eyelids twitched. The acridity of smoke burned my nose, and I sat up, looking first for a house fire, then to my lamp, where a smoke plume danced from the wick. The oil had burned dry after I’d carried my drawings to bed to page through and fallen asleep. The papers were scattered across my blanket, and every place I glanced, Heather stared back.

  Poisoned wine. Terra. Milo.

  Heather’s necklace draped across the front of my nightgown. I felt along the metal links until I came to Milo’s ring, which I’d strung on the chain.

  Why was Heather by that river?

  To find me.

  “She didn’t care,” my sleep-muzzy mouth fumbled.

  She did. What if she came to apologize?

  If I kept thinking these thoughts, I’d scream and wake the house. I groped around my nightstand, searching for my mug in hope maybe some scant tea drops remained to dull my brain. My fingers caught the mug’s curved handle, and with an awkward spin, the cup crashed against the floor. I waited for Mama’s feet to bombard the hall.

  Silence.

  With Mamie’s blanket on my shoulders, I climbed out of bed, past my window, white with condensation. Heather used to write messages on the glass, made me figure out the backwards spelling. Our code. I wiped down the pane, removing the fog. Something lay on the windowsill outside.

  I cranked open my window and picked up a piece of agate wrapped in wire. I’d been with Heather when she unearthed it. She polished it and made it a charm for her necklace. I’d noticed it was missing, but here it was. Smudged with dried blood.

  I dropped the stone charm. It landed on the floor and rolled a few inches before coming to rest against the wall.

  Heather’s blood.

  I tried to scream, though my tongue seemed too large. Someone was standing in the field.

  “D-d-dreaming,” I told myself. “Or a scarecrow.”

  I didn’t want to touch anything, but I urged myself—sliding down the window to shut it. But then I couldn’t see where the figure was, if it neared. My palm flattened against the glass and slashed up to down, like a gash through the fog.

  “No!” I choked on the word.

  The shape in the field loomed tall, shrouded with moonlight around the cape of animal pelts. The torch fires’ gory red glow, the neigh of a horse ridden by a guard somewhere far off. Despite the closed window, I smelled decay and heard the flies buzzing.

  Birch Markle stared at me.

  I plummeted to the floor, with my knees tucked against my breasts, and I didn’t move until the robins began their morning song.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Just ’cause a fellow’s mad don’t mean he can’t know the land and how to live off it. Birch’s been out there all these years. Only a few times anybody’s caught a glimpse of him in his animal skins, living off wild honey, bugs, and blood like some kinda demented John the Baptist.

  Copper circles like pennies dried on the field. Some creature died last night, and its blood fed the Glen’s soil.

  As soon as I awakened, I’d braided a garland of basil and clover. The stems twisted in my fingers, each movement in time with the memory of Mamie’s tales. Clover keeps the bad away, and where there’s basil, no evil can a-enter.

  I hung it over my window.

  I didn’t want to go back to school. Classes were insignificant now. What was there to learn? All the teaching couldn’t prepare you for death. Once, I’d been a good student, wanted passing grades, but now it was a routine I didn’t care about. I’d been away since Heather first disappeared, and the only reason I went back was because Papa said I must.

  No one was around when I left for school with Rook. Mama was at Mamie’s house, helping after Marsh banged on our door in the middle of the night. He had a limp from where Aunt Rue hit him.

  “Woman trouble,” he called it. Not the baby kind, either. Aunt Rue was in the field, naked under the moon, and hollering for Birch to take her.

  I tried sleeping again, even covering my ears and drinking more tea, but the screams found me.

  During class, I felt the stares, heard the whispers. As much as we liked to pretend the Glen was an enclave unto itself, it wasn’t true. The inside and outside mingled, not much but enough that neither could be unaware of the ripples running through their individual streams.

  The dead girl, someone whispered.

  She’s one of them, another voice stroked my neck.

  I was a dead girl. I’d joined the ranks
of Terra and Heather, felt the chill settle and turn to peace before Rook ripped me away. To walk between the worlds was my fate. How could I explain that I wasn’t who I once was but something haunted?

  I wanted to live.

  I wanted to be Ivy. I hadn’t been ready before, but without Heather, the shade where I dwelled grounded me in a way I had never been when she pulled me toward the light.

  I missed her, though.

  The whispers were too loud, and I raised my hand to be excused to the bathroom. My literature teacher dismissed me. Milo lifted his head from playing with his cell phone. The classroom was too small and tight, the whispers too hot in my ears, and my throat constricted around itself until I couldn’t breathe. I hurried down the hallway to a drinking fountain, gulping, gulping, gulping water until the fever went out of my cheeks.

  I rifled through my pockets for a paper. Heather’s words were the last things of hers I had, even if they were to Milo and spoke of their promises, the nakedness of their fears.

  H,

  You say you don’t want to hurt me. Then come with me. I’ll help you get out of this middle-of-nowhere hellhole. Where we go, who we are won’t matter. On May Day, after sunset, I promise I’ll wait for you in our place in the woods. That’s when we’ll leave. All those secrets, you won’t have to worry about anyone finding out. Not your family. Not Ivy. No one. It’ll be just you and me.

  Trust me.

  —M

  M,

  I’m scared.

  —H

  H,

  Don’t be scared.

  I’ll be with you. We got this.

  —M

  I crushed the paper and shut my eyes. No more crying.

  Footsteps shuffled down the hall. Even with my closed eyes, I sensed Milo’s tallness looming over me. He smelled of smoke and medicine. I’d feared him at times, but now, this second, he was gentle as he took the paper from me.

  I waited a minute before opening my eyes and asking, “Did you mean it? All those things you said to Heather?”

  He swallowed and covered his full lips. His skin was scruffy with light brown stubble. He mimicked my posture with my back to the lockers and then slid down the metal, slumped with legs splayed out.

  “Fucking Heather.” His nose reddened. “It ain’t supposed to be this way.”

  I sat beside him. My hand hovered above his back, and when I dared touch his shoulder, he was bonier than expected, quivering with each breath. This roller boy hid his face and muffled the sounds of his crying. He could be hard and mouthy, but how much was a reaction to life being hard and mouthy to him?

  From what Heather had told me that foggy morning, I believed she’d loved him. I never considered he actually loved her with the same depth. No one loved like Heather.

  Hesitant, afraid, I wrapped my arms around him, and as we hugged, warm teardrops fell from his face to soak my shirt collar.

  He sniffed. “People like Heather, they’re so bright they burn out too fast.”

  Except Heather didn’t burn out. She was extinguished.

  At the end of the school day, Rook and I walked along the road toward the Glen in a slow, thoughtful stride. My brain dizzied with Milo’s grief, the love letter I once again scrunched in my hand.

  Rook eyed the scrap of paper. “You’re being quiet.”

  “I have too many questions,” I answered.

  “Start with asking one.”

  “What if Milo promised to run away with Heather and never intended to follow through? Or what if they were gonna go but Emmie stopped them?” I grabbed my head. “What if we’re just wrong about everything?”

  “Hold up. I said to ask one question, not all of them.” Rook forced a smile. “I don’t trust Milo, but he was in the woods waiting for her. His sister, though . . .”

  We neared the trailer park and walked along the chainlink fence. Heather was a ghost here, a memory of a laugh, a sudden stream of red curls. I’d walked beside her for years. Her footsteps carried a certain weight that I always knew when she was close by.

  We were near the gate of the trailer park. Milo’s trailer was visible with a heavily rusted truck sticking out of the carport.

  “Why the hell would they meet in the woods, of all places?” I asked Rook. “Heather knew it was off-limits. She liked danger, but he must’ve done some convincing or—Rook?”

  He was distracted by the fence, examining the vine weaving the metal grid. His fingers nudged some dried blue-black berries from last fall still clinging to the vine. The fence was a wall of green as far as I could see.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Belladonna,” he replied, looking up. “An awful lot of it.”

  I held the kitten on the exam table in the clinic while Papa changed the cotton around her paw. I’d found the green-eyed ginger kitten on the doorstep after school yesterday. At first, Mama tried to stop me from checking on the sound of meowing, convinced it was a devil’s trick. The sky was blood, shadows unpredictable and filled with story. It’d be a sin to leave her outside, Papa had told Mama as he lay on the floor with the kitten and dangled a string for her paws to bat.

  We named her Wednesday.

  Papa put away his stethoscope. “You still drinking Mamie’s tea?”

  “Mama won’t let me miss a dose,” I replied. My hands rubbed the kitten’s back, letting her tail circle my wrist. She was so pretty, so red and affectionate.

  “Sleep-Away-Sorrow works right well. Mamie only brews it up when your head’s better off sedated while working out what hell it’s seen.” Papa scrunched his nose. “Too much anise for my taste.”

  “You’ve drunk that tea?”

  “Indeed.”

  “When Gramps died?”

  “Long time before that,” he said.

  I placed Wednesday in the nest I’d made behind the counter where Heather used to sit so many days after school.

  My fingers drummed the counter. “Wh-why’s Sheriff promised to keep me safe?”

  Papa dropped a cleaning cloth in a bucket of vinegar water. “’Cause he’s a lawman, and that’s what they do.”

  “He says he owes you. What happened? What made you go on that missionary trip? Nobody else ’round here does them, and it ain’t like you’re that prayerful a man.”

  “Ivy!”

  “Y-you can’t tell me you left only to go to vet school. That’s at Mizzou—but you went to Mexico. Why? If you hated being here in the Glen, why’d you come back?”

  His mouth tightened, eyes steely behind his glasses. “I left ’cause the future I planned wasn’t gonna happen. I came back ’cause I forgave. Sometimes all you can do is forgive and hope folks learn from the past.”

  “Did they?” I asked.

  “Your cousin’s dead, so no, they didn’t.”

  For the next hour, Papa remained in his office. I was alone but not. It was impossible not to feel Heather. I reached for the thermos under the counter and poured more tea. My mind was overaware, and I didn’t want that. I wanted Sleep-Away-Sorrow’s warm-bath sensation, of sliding down into a pool of nothingness. Drink it fast, make it hit harder. No memories of Heather’s lipless grin and her neck bones cracking. No more recollection of her teeth clacking together to shape words.

  Find it, Ivy.

  I swallowed the last dregs and withdrew my sketchbook. The drawings weren’t mine anymore. I couldn’t recall penning the images: torn dresses with darkness leaking from wounds, horses without manes, and boy hands on curved hips. If anyone saw what resided in my book, they’d think I’d gone mad.

  I felt closer to death than life.

  I reached under the counter to retrieve my pencil sharpener. My thumb snagged on a hole inside, one that opened up through the underside of the countertop. I shouldn’t have thought much of it—carpenter ants, mice—any pesky critter could’ve chewed through the wood. Yet I was half asleep, and the hole was magical. I stuck my finger inside.

  A folded paper fluttered out.

 
; It was marked with uneven lines in my cousin’s writing. Words like mounds, shrubs, marsh, river. It was a rudimentary map of someplace deep in the woods. Where it led, I had no idea, but wherever it was, Heather had kept it secret, with a cryptic sentence amid her description of the grounds.

  Be afraid of what’s right in front of you.

  I’d been afraid. I was still afraid. Except I didn’t know what to fear anymore.

  My head lay on the desk, paper against my cheek. The pencil rolled and poked me in the lip while my eyelids became curtains to blacken my world. My pencil traced my profile, and some part of me knew when I slipped off the page my hand kept working, though I didn’t dare see what hauntings in my head came out . . .

  Teeth. Human and animal mixed together in the same mouth. The mouth hovered close to my forehead, breath reeking of honey, boy sweat, and coagulated blood. Vultures would come soon. The stench would draw them.

  I pushed back the shape, but I had no hands, only stumps where glossy, scarlet pools thumped against the dog heads tied together on the shape’s chest. There was no place to run, too many trees behind me, and from somewhere else, water trickled close by. I prayed it was water.

  “Shhh,” the shape said, and pressed fingers to my lips.

  The skin was cold.

  Because it was mine.

  The shape held my dead hand.

  “Shhh,” Birch Markle repeated. “All secrets you keep are someone else’s lies.”

  Shrieks tore from me until my vocal cords bled in my throat, then I kept screaming . . .

  “Ivy!” Papa shook me. His hands enveloped my cheeks. “Ivy, wake up!”

  One more scream jerked from my mouth, and Papa tugged me against his shoulder. I flexed my fingers. They were stiff and frigid, but they bent and moved. Alive.

  “The nightmares will stop,” Papa promised, still hugging me.

  “How are you so sure?” I asked.

  “Mine did.”