by P. J. Vernon
A few more yards, and he spoke again. “But they terminate down here,” he said, side-stepping down the slope to the tall grass and the foamy water’s edge beyond it. I followed his lead.
Ahead, the burst of a flashbulb accompanied the man photographing a patch of salt meadow and saw grass—all of it staked and cordoned off with more ribbon. A woman knelt by his side, picking through leafy matter with a pair of forceps, a bundle of Ziploc baggies by her side.
“Hopefully those’ll fit you.” My companion motioned to an empty pair of rubber boots a couple feet from where I stood. I took the hint and slipped them on, leaving my own hiking boots behind.
“Down here’s where the dogs led us,” he announced, waving to the staked-out patch. My feet sank deep into the festering marsh mud as I traced the man’s steps. “Sure enough, we found quite a bit that tested positive with Luminol.”
“Oxidized in the presence of blood,” I stated.
He nodded. “Mr. Godfrey’s iron-rich hemoglobin to be exact. Two sets of tracks, but his is the only sample we’ve found.”
“Results back already?”
“Confirmation came in just before you got here.”
So, at the very least, Paul was presumably injured. If there’d been a fight, blood from Jacob might have been found, too. He hadn’t displayed any obvious signs, bruises or otherwise, but then he’d been wearing jeans, long sleeves. Sammie had told me he was processing the warrant for Jacob’s DNA right now. As soon as he got the lab techs a sample to compare with, some of Jacob’s blood could turn up.
“How much is ‘quite a bit’?” I asked. “I used to slice my legs up all the time on saw grass as a kid. The stuff’s practically serrated.”
“Not a whole lot,” he answered. “And you’re right. Mr. Godfrey could’ve cut himself on the grass, but I’m not inclined to believe it.”
I wiped sweat from my brow. The closer to the water I drew, the more the air turned jungle humid. “Why’s that?”
He glanced towards the ash-colored sky, swollen with rain. “The way it’s been pouring the past week, to find anything suggests there was a lot of material present at first. Most of it would’ve been washed out. Diluted.”
“We’re looking at a transition, then?” I folded my arms across my chest. “Missing person to homicide?”
He shrugged. “Hard to conclude homicide without a body, but given the circumstances and the fact Mr. Godfrey hasn’t turned up anywhere, that’s my hypothesis.”
My thoughts went to each of the people I’d spoken with so far. People like Jacob Wilcox and Charlotte. Gray and Joanna. The woman, Annie, who I couldn’t find.
“Nice to have a body for a homicide,” I agreed. “We need divers.”
“Already sent for,” he replied. “I’ve got an oceanographer coming up from Beaufort, too. Tides and currents have been a mess with all the bad weather, but they’ll know where to look.”
My question from earlier—who stood to benefit from Paul’s absence?—took on a newer, darker meaning. Who stood to gain from his murder?
24
Annie
I consume news of Gray’s accident with the same gleefulness that I had when Paul’s missing persons report came down the wire. I set events into motion, and there’s no stopping them now. They’ll evolve and escalate and assume a chaotic life all their own.
They already are.
I spin a lock of my hair into a ringlet around my index finger.
I should tell her. I should tell Gray. There’s no reason Gray can’t know the truth. At least some of it. Or maybe she can know the whole truth. The nasty, awful, rotting truth.
Releasing my ringlet, it bounces once like a spring before straightening itself out.
No, that’s not fair. It isn’t right to do that to her. At least not all at once. But I could give it to her in tiny doses. Little bits and pieces of truth. Spoonfuls at a time. Like medicine. Or poison. She won’t realize the effect they have because they’re too subtle. They might even feel good at first. And by the time she realizes the answers are killing her, it’ll be too late.
Too fucking late.
25
Gray
There were no windows in my hospital suite. A digital clock above the doorway said it was half past six in the evening. The only light came from soft bulbs beneath a row of cabinets on one side. Everything reeked of sterility.
On the tray extending over my legs sat a collection of Styrofoam containers. Peas and chopped carrots. Greek yogurt. A cup of melting shaved ice.
The nurse—the man with the self-righteous attitude towards painkillers—insisted on leaving the food. “It’ll do you good to eat something,” he’d said as he made notes on my chart. “Your blood sugar’s too low, and you’re underweight as is. You’re also Vitamin B deficient. Common for folks who drink … a lot.”
He was right about needing calories, but the idea of eating repulsed me. Charlotte and Mamma had gone for dinner themselves, and I’d been alone for the past half hour.
To be fair, I’d tried for the yogurt, but the throbbing in my collarbone prevented me from reaching it. The movement my arm sling permitted was deceptive as far as pain went, but there was no point in ringing that nurse for more than the ordered Percocet. A single tablet every four hours. Not a minute earlier.
Murmuring voices outside the door interrupted my thoughts. As the handle turned, I closed my eyes. Feigning sleep, my only way to hide.
Clicking dress shoes told me whoever entered wasn’t a scrubbed-up nurse or doctor. Mamma and Charlotte hadn’t been gone long enough. And Mamma wouldn’t eat fast food. She’d have found a booth for the two of them to sit down and eat casually.
Besides, I heard only one set of shoes on the tiled floor. Maybe it was someone with a clerical job to do. Coming for insurance information, perhaps. As the person drew closer, keeping my eyes shut became harder. The tighter I held them, the more they twitched.
I detected a man’s cologne, expensive like Paul’s but not the same brand. Behind it, the scent of musk. The way a man’s suit smelled after a long day at a desk. Perspiration mixed with Old Spice and office.
As soon as I opened my eyes, my heart stopped. Standing before the hospital bed was my cousin.
Matthew.
My face flushed hot as my heart crawled up my throat.
He wore a tailored suit subtly patterned in a dark plaid. His loosely curled locks shined from hair product. His Roman nose, distinctive.
“Hello, Gray,” he said, setting a glass vase of yellow tulips on the table beside my food tray. “I’m so sorry,” he added as he stood a card next to the etched crystal.
I couldn’t speak. My blood froze solid in my veins, and now my bottom lip trembled. Just like my hands beneath the scratchy quilt.
I’d awoken to a nightmare. This wasn’t supposed to happen. You wake to escape, to leave terrors behind in a place where they can’t find you or hurt you.
“After everything that’s happened—Paul and the rest. This?” His eyes appeared sullen and anguished. Despite the shock, I retained the wherewithal to doubt the sadness in them was for me. Not only for me.
He continued in a softened voice, slow and deliberate and stomach-turning. “Aunt Joanna phoned me to let me know what happened. She described the circumstances of the accident. Police were first on the scene so a report had already been filed by the time she called. You were very intoxicated.”
The person she spoke to—the one who would take care of everything. It was Matthew. How could she? How could she have done this to me? She knew everything. I’d told her everything that’d happened. For Christ’s sake, I’m her child!
“I know we haven’t spoken in a long time, but Aunt Joanna was frightened you’d be arrested,” he said, taking a seat at the foot of my bed. As he sunk into the padding, the whole room pulled in closer. “And she was right. The county prosecutor was prepared to move forward with charges.”
A fire grew inside my chest. My organs burne
d within my ribs. I willed my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I couldn’t move my lips.
“You’ve nothing to worry over,” he said with a smile. “I made a few calls and the county prosecutor agreed to drop it. I changed his appraisal of the situation. With all the stress of Paul’s case, there was no point in piling it on when no else was injured. Of course, you’ll still need to show you’re making an effort to get help, but nothing more.”
I began to flinch with every movement he made. Brushing his slacks, adjusting his collar. I jerked each time, and he appeared to take note. He avoided my eyes as though they might melt him.
He finally stood from the bed, and his look suggested he realized it’d been a mistake to visit me. “In any case, I stopped by to say hello and wish you well. I wanted to let you know myself that everything was squared away.”
He lingered at the bedside for a moment more. My nails dug into my palms like knives.
“Goodbye, Gray,” he said, turning to leave. As he opened the door, he paused and added, “I’m sorry again.”
The door clicked shut, and he was gone.
The flames inside my chest raged like a frantic fire searching for more oxygen. More fuel to burn.
I reached for the crystal vase he’d brought and a searing flash of pain crackled from my fractured bone and down my arm. But the bolt of adrenaline carried me as I hurled the vase at the wall, screaming. It struck plaster in a shattering crash. Glass shards rained to the floor as water and yellow petals splashed in every direction.
The moment I stopped screaming, the pain became unbearable. I buried my face into my pillow and wailed.
“What happened?” The nurse shouted as he bolted through the door and raced to my side. “Mrs. Godfrey! Are you okay?”
I let the pillow fall to my lap but couldn’t speak through my sobbing.
“What happened here?” He asked again, eyeing the glass, broken and strewn.
I trembled from head to toe. The pain from my broken shoulder turned from white-hot to dull and deep.
“Mrs. Godfrey, are you okay? Talk to me, please!”
Looking into his eyes, I spoke in a raspy whisper, “How could she have called him?”
The nurse knotted his brow, struggling to understand. “How could she have called who, Mrs. Godfrey?”
* * *
Two doors led to Piper Point’s cellar. A wooden aperture, gnarled and splintering, from the backyard, and the clean white paneled one in the kitchen.
On that day, my hands trembled by my sides. Damp like Matthew’s had been when he led me to the kitchen, away from Charlotte watching cartoons upstairs. I’d second-guessed myself as I followed him, fought to squash my fear with every step. If Matthew could face the Devil, so could I. And if he was tricking me, then I’d show him how tough I was. It wasn’t so easy for him to fool me anymore.
“Why would the Devil live down there?” I asked, turning from the cellar door towards my cousin.
“Might have something to do with what happened down there,” he started.
“What happened?”
“It’s past. It’s history, Gray.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Matthew pressed on, taking my hand again. The sweat collecting on our palms mixed. “After the Civil War, Sherman was burning everything from Atlanta eastward. So, the women of Elizabeth hid down there.” He stroked my palm with his knuckle as he spoke. “Children, too. Babies.”
He reached over my shoulder and turned the whining brass handle. A gentle push and the door creaked open. The first few steps, crooked and rotting, vanished into the blackness below. A rush of ice-cold air washed over me.
“Go on, Gray,” he spoke into my ear, warm breath whistling inside my head. Matthew nudged me onto the first step. Knees locked, I almost toppled. Matthew’s hand found my shoulder and steadied me.
“But the Union soldiers were on the hunt for folks hiding. And in Elizabeth in those days, there weren’t too many places to hide. They stomped through Piper Point, tracking mud all over with their big leather boots. And they found them—the women and the children. Found them hiding down here. And they didn’t like the fact that traitors—in their opinion—thought they might escape what was coming to them.”
The second step.
“What happened next? Did they hurt them?” My voice caught in my throat. The chill spread to my teeth and my bones, and they chattered and trembled.
“They told them, angry as sin, ‘You wanna hide in the dark?’” Matthew’s voice grew demanding and deep. “‘Then you can stay in the dark!’”
I jolted on the third step. The wooden plank lurched, groaned. Wisps of damp mildew bloomed into a wet stench
Matthew’s voice grew matter-of-fact. “So, the soldiers stuck hot sewing needles into their eyes. The women. The children. The babies, crying and hollering. Red hot needles into the soft whites of their eyes.”
“They did not!” A burst of courage as sweat beaded on my brow.
“They did.” Matthew shrugged.
A fourth step, and my stomach flipped. My own eyes burned. He was tricking me. His story wasn’t true. Daddy would’ve told me if all this happened. Still, if I played along—even if the fear was real—the game would go on. Maybe after, when I’d proven to Matthew he could let me in on it, we could even spook Charlotte, too.
“Chopped their fingers and toes to bits, too. Tore out the tongues of the ones that wouldn’t shut up. Tortured them. Showed the mother’s what their babies’ insides looked like, and then laughed at the wailing women ‘cause they couldn’t see.
“They locked all the blind women down here. Yep, the Union soldiers made quite a home for the Devil in this cellar. Nothing the Devil likes more than bits and pieces of babies strewn about.
“But it was cold being locked down here back then, just like it is now. And the women needed to stay warm. With no kindling, they had to burn what remained of their children in the furnace or they’d freeze to death.”
On the fifth plank, nearly to the bottom of the rotting cellar stairs, I froze. The brave face I’d worked up dissolved, and I became a petrified piece of timber—an extension of the wooden step. As darkness swallowed us both, I started to blame myself. I’d begged to hear a scary story, and I’d taken it too far. Believed too much of it. But it was too late. The damage was done, and the ghosts Matthew spoke of, real or not, had been conjured. They swirled and breathed around me as shadows dancing across the cellar’s stone walls.
Matthew goaded, “Go on, Gray.” Another gentle push and both of my feet found the cement floor, cracked and uneven like the moist ground beneath it.
“I don’t want—”
“So that’s where the Devil lives now. Among all those burnt babies. Go on and have a look in the furnace. You can see him for yourself.”
My heart thumped wildly beneath my tiny ribs. I took a deep breath. My eyes were teary, but I was almost there. Matthew would be so proud if I took a look. If I showed him I wasn’t scared. I couldn’t let him see that I was afraid.
Stepping across the floor, I imagined my feet sinking into the wet gore of baby pieces. Blood like inky black paint. My legs slowed, wanting to turn back. To run up the steps, to the rest of the house swaddled in sunlight. Back upstairs to Charlotte.
But behind me, Matthew formed an impenetrable wall. His chest, swelling and shrinking in anticipation, forced me onward. Around the corner. Towards the furnace. Where the Devil lived.
Something moved to my right. My reflection, barely visible in the dark. The landing mirror—the one Daddy had taken down—stood propped against the river stone foundation. I paused, squinting at its cracked surface just to make sure the girl looking back really was me.
“Almost there,” Matthew said, pushing me forward and away from the enormous mirror.
I’d seen the furnace before, but this time was different. This time, it materialized from shadow like an evil thing. A creature sprung up from the uneven ground. Black cast-iron like soot or tar.
When it was turned off, it melded with the shadows, but even in the darkness it gleamed, swollen like the belly of a pregnant woman. A grate crossed its potbelly, splitting it open at the seams like the people from Matthew’s story. The grate curved upwards at the edges, like a smile. Wicked. Carnivorous.
“Just me and you, Gray. We’re the only ones who know. A secret for the two of us. Have a look. I dare you.”
My shoulders jumped. In the span of a few seconds I’d forgotten Matthew stood behind me. The furnace had drawn all my thoughts.
The air changed. My ears felt plugged or muffled, but as I crept closer, a sound grew. A sharp, constant sound. Hissing. A hissing like a—
“Do you hear him?” Matthew asked. “If he looks you in the eye…”
I nodded, swallowed the stiff lump building in the back of my throat.
“Well, we’ll deal with that if it happens.”
I was nearly to the furnace now. The constant hiss of gas feeding its unending hunger grew louder and louder. Like a snake.
“Look inside.”
If the grate was a mouth, then the caged bars within were sharp teeth, dripping with long strings of black saliva. It seemed to open, to call me. To swallow me whole.
“Don’t look him in the eye.”
The tip of my nose nearly touched the iron. The hissing came from a metal rod buried deep within the creature’s belly. It hypnotized me.
The hissing became a sudden tick-ticking. A spark. A swooshing roar. Flames erupted within as a searing blossom. I screamed and stumbled backwards.
A blast of fiery heat and light drew the rest of the room pitch black. Streaks from the sudden brightness formed and floated across the inside of my eyelids.
I saw him. A glimpse. A mere fraction of a second, but it was him. Crocodile grin. The Devil. And he looked like Matthew.
Matthew, who’d caught me with both arms. They latched around me then like a too-tight belt, his fingers interlocking just below my belly button.
“You’ve seen the Devil, haven’t you Gray?” he whispered. His breath, hot like the fire. “You’re a bad girl now.”