The Winslow Incident

THE MONSTERS IN TOWN

Jinx was gone, but Hazel’s motorcycle was still there. Pitched in the dirt at the side of Loop-Loop Road, her Yamaha looked broken, beat-up—looked pretty much the way she felt.

“Jinx!” She whistled for him, producing more wheeze than whistle. “Come here, boy!”

No use, the Irish setter was gone, and she could only hope some sane and sympathetic person had happened upon him and was now nursing him back to health with hamburgers and hot dogs (his favorite). Or buried him, she couldn’t help but think, and tears blurred her vision.

She forced herself to get moving, to leave Jinx yet again in the belief—delusional, she recognized—that he’d find her like he always managed to, every day, before all of this started.

Three days ago. She blinked hard against the tears, against her utter disbelief.

Just three days ago she’d fought with her dad about being out too late Friday night. How ridiculous. Three days ago she’d accused Patience of being completely paranoid, of looking for trouble. Three days ago Jinx was still wagging his tail. And Sean still wanted to hold her hand.

She glanced westward, squinting against the sunset. Three days? Impossible.

Walking up Loop-Loop Road, bugs stuck to her sticky skin and hunger churned her empty belly. She adjusted her arm in the makeshift sling and took a stab at mental imagery to distract her mind from the misery of her ruined elbow. She’d read somewhere that people endure surgery without anesthesia by concentrating on pleasant thoughts: beaches and waterfalls, kittens and puppies. So she willed herself to think about swimming in Ruby Creek with Sean, and her grandmother brushing her hair with the soft-bristled Bakelite hairbrush, and her father giving her a bear hug, the kind that squishes her ribcage and makes her beg for mercy.

But the pain was stubborn and refused to leave. So she carried it with her between the quaking aspens, up Winslow Road, back toward town.

Still hot despite the setting sun, the heat was cooking the grime deeper into her skin. She looked down at her feet carrying her along the dusty, pot-holed road and turned Tanner’s words over in her mind: “I’ll take you to your mother.”

Now she felt foolish, ashamed even, that she’d even been tempted. After all, her mother knew where to find her. If she wanted to bother.

Swatting at the pack of gnats swarming her head, she questioned whether anybody had ever felt this lonely. Somebody sentenced to life in a Turkish prison, she supposed, or somebody shipwrecked and floating on a makeshift raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Can you hear me? she sent out a telepathic message to Sean. Where are you? Then she emptied her mind, open to his reassuring response.

No answer came. Instead, tears rose. But she would not let herself cry again—too draining. And she needed to think about what to do next.

“I have to warn people not to eat the bread,” she told Sean, wherever he might be. “But if I do that, will I get you into trouble?”

Still no answer, telepathic or otherwise.

She continued anyway. “Zachary must know what’s going on and why, because he told Violet and Daisy not to eat any bread.” She scratched her nose. “But has he told anyone else?”

It was Violet’s voice that answered her. “Daddy’s not well,” echoed in Hazel’s mind.

Hazel kicked a pinecone out of her way. “Why the hell didn’t Zachary listen to you, Sean? If he had, we wouldn’t be in this stinkin’ mess, now would we?”

Almost to town, she suddenly realized that she should’ve erased Sean’s apology from the granite wall, and that she’d have to go back out to Matherston Cemetery at first light. “I swore I’d protect you, Sean. Crossed my heart and hoped to die.”

In an instance of poor planning, the church cemetery was the first thing greeting visitors upon arrival downtown. The hand-painted sign directly preceding the graveyard (Rose Peabody’s handiwork) read, WELCOME TO WINSLOW, and Hazel always thought “more dead than alive” would be an appropriate add-on.

More signs followed: THE WINSLOW—LEFT ON RUBY ROAD, CLEMSHAW MERCANTILE ON FORTUNE WAY, CAL’S FISH ’N BAIT, RHONE BAKERY SINCE 1924, and finally, ROSE’S CROCK decorated with pie slices and a T-bone pointing straight ahead.

Hazel veered into the cemetery. The plots sat tiered up the hill, each section contained by a low retaining wall constructed of brick or granite and bordered by wrought iron fencing. From the top of the rise, the small church kept watch over the dead.

The graveyard had another visitor, who glanced up from chewing grass next to the Mathers section of graves beside a huge oak tree. Hazel slogged up the hill and when she reached the oak, slung her good arm around a low branch and leaned against its cragged bark.

“Did you escape from the ranch?” she asked the cow mowing around Sadie Mathers’ grave.

Chewing her cud, the cow stared at Hazel with enormous eyes.

“Good for you.” Hazel looked up at the oak’s massive branches; it had grown, evidently, since Sadie’s brother Sterling dug her up from the Winslow family graveyard and reburied her beside the tree.

With the sun gone, the oak and headstones quickly turned dark; the cow stood silhouetted against the pallid sky. Hazel would have lingered there awhile, had she not sensed things trying to wriggle to life beneath her feet. So she got her tennis shoes moving toward the church, where music played and candles flickered behind stained glass.

A white, clapboard structure, the church was neither large nor fancy save for its colorful windows. Like the school, the community served the church on a rotating basis. With no permanent minister, sometimes Rose or Owen Peabody gave do-unto-others-type sermons, other times Ben Mathers preached hellfire and brimstone. Not because he believed it, Hazel always thought, but because he enjoyed it.

When she pushed open the door and walked into the church, she found the people inside sheathed in sweat. All the windows were shut tight, and every nook and cranny held lit candles that cast fast-moving shadows against the walls. Several people were on their knees praying. A woman played a dirge on the organ while another softly sang, but the lyrics didn’t seem to match the tune the organist was churning out.

The atmosphere was so eerily thick that Hazel’s gut instinct was to turn around and flee. Yet she remained rooted to the spot, transfixed by the fearful oration streaming from the pulpit, the force of it drowning out the singing and the music and the praying.

It wasn’t Rose or Owen Peabody preaching. It was Ben Mathers.

“The devil challenges us in our weakness.” The old man glowed, eyes greedy behind a pair of goggles. “Unless and until we atone for our misdeeds, we shall shed tears in great plenty.”

“Amen.” The organist nodded.

Ben Mathers lifted his goggles to look dead on at Hazel. “Wrongs must be righted. Wicked acts atoned for.”

A thin man standing before the pulpit shouted, “Atone, yes!”

“Atone.” The organist agreed.

“Atone!” the thin man repeated. Then, slowly, he turned.

Doc Simmons.

Hazel hadn’t seen the vet since he shot at her and Jinx from his porch—and her rage against this man instantly overtook her. This man who would do nothing to help anybody. He who had hurt her dog, killed him maybe, and very nearly killed her.

“Atone for this, you lunatic!” Hazel shouted as she charged toward him past rows of pews.

The prayer-makers stopped praying and the singer stopped singing. But Ben Mathers droned on, “Without atonement there is no salvation. Without salvation there is no peace . . .”

Simmons noticed her then, adjusted his spectacles, and must’ve realized she was gunning for him because he dashed out the doorway to the left of the pulpit. This time, he had no rifle.

Hazel reached the doorway seconds later to find Simmons halted just outside, shrinking from the darkness back toward the church. She stood behind him, longing to strangle him, certain she could find the strength even one-armed, the fingers of her left hand twitching with the desire to sink her nails into the saggy flesh at his neck. But she needed answers. “Tell me what’s in the bread that’s making people sick.”

After Simmons spun around, he leaned so far back from her she thought he’d topple over. “I don’t know anything!”

“Don’t mess with me, Simmons.”

“Leave me alone. I don’t know anything.”

“Tell me: What is it?”

His mouth drew down in a grossly exaggerated frown.

“What?” Hazel reached her arm toward him.

He leaned even farther back. “Ergot.”

“Er—, what?”

“Ergot. Now leave me be, girl.”

“No. What is it?”

“A mold, a fungus. Found its way into Pard Holloway’s feed as sure as the sun.”

“The flour too?”

“Looks that way.”

“Did you tell my uncle? Or Zachary Rhone? Anybody?”

Simmons shook his head rapidly back and forth.

“How long will this last? How long will everybody be sick from it?”

More head shaking.

“What are you going to do about it?”

He held up empty hands. “Nothing I can do, and that’s the honest truth.”

She leaned closer to him. “Is it going to get worse?”

He seemed to think his feet were stuck and he continued to pivot his torso away from her.

“Worse?” she repeated.

He gave a slight nod.

“How bad, Simmons?”

“Bad.” He finally uprooted one foot and turned from her.

Watching him run into the night, she yelled, “My dad’s gonna arrest you! Throw your ass in jail for dog murder and willful neglect of our town!”

It was then Hazel realized it couldn’t have been her dad who ordered quarantine; it must’ve been her Uncle Pard. That for whatever reason, Tanner lied. Her father would never order quarantine without first consulting with at least one real doctor. Ergot? At this point she couldn’t be sure that it was something real and not just Simmons winding out. Either way, there was nothing contagious about this sickness and the last thing they needed was quarantine.

She wasn’t aware that Cal from the Fish ’n Bait had come up behind her and was also watching Simmons scurry away until he said, “He’d better watch out for Indians. Scalping is a rough way to die.”

When Hazel turned to look at Cal, he smiled at her . . . not a warm and friendly smile, but the smile of a madman that made her stomach flip over.

She hurried away from Cal and the church, into the darkness, heading in the opposite direction Simmons had fled.

Bad, she shivered.

The street appeared deserted, which was at once a relief and a worry. And while the air had cooled a few degrees she remained sticky and damp. If she weren’t so scared of the dark she would’ve gone straight to Ruby Creek and jumped in with her dirty clothes on.

Once Dad feels better, she thought, there’s going to be some serious hell to pay. Simmons, definitely. And Old Pete and Kenny Clark for dumping the sick at The Winslow. Unacceptable. And whoever was responsible for the blood on Violet and Daisy Rhone’s dresses, they would have to pay too.

Civic Street seemed especially sinister. Usually a benign collection of buildings, she now imagined things hiding behind dark windows and brick walls. Hiding and watching. Sick people and sasquatches, lunatics and wolves. The strong sensation that she was being watched sent the creeps crawling up the back of her neck. She picked up the pace.

Ducking into Prospect Park, she thought, Six hours of darkness left, six and a half at the most. That was one good thing about summer in Winslow: not dark till ten, light at five. Not well acquainted with five o’clock in the morning, or six even, she knew that this particular morning she’d be relieved when the sun rose.

For now, the park was deep in silence and shadow. As she moved across the playground, she kept catching movement out of the corner of her eye. But when she’d turn to look, there was never anything there except for the swings, the little merry-go-round, monkey bars. She put the hustle on, anxious to pop out onto better-lit Park Street.

When she reached the duck pond, her foot encountered something mushy. Hazel shuddered and saliva flooded her mouth.

She glanced down in horror, certain she’d stepped on a body.

It was a pile of clothes: a sundress, a man’s shirt, a squishy down jacket. She remembered Julie Marsh wearing that parka because it’d struck her as so odd. She poked at the clothing with her shoe, terrified she might uncover a body part—a toe or a finger, an entire hand.

Where is Julie now? Hazel scanned the dark park.

Silence and shadow.

Until an astoundingly loud crunch split the quiet, followed by the scream of metal scraping against metal. It came from Civic Street, where she’d walked just minutes ago.

When she turned to look, she saw a streetlamp falling. It hit the road in a shatter of glass and the light extinguished. Through the trees, she could make out vehicle headlights traveling slowly up the street toward Ruby Road. Then the vehicle picked up speed before slamming into a parked car in another cacophony of destruction. Her heartbeat raced out of control. Maybe she should’ve left with Tanner. Did I make a mistake?

“I think I made a big one,” she whispered and hurried on.

She was nearly to Park Street when the ducks came after her. In a confusion of quacking and flapping, a dozen birds burst from the darkness to chase her the rest of the way out of Prospect Park.

When she reached the street she glanced back to find they’d all stopped at the edge of the park, evidently satisfied now that she’d left their territory, except for one large duck who continued to waddle toward her. “Get lost, you stupid duck.”

The green-headed bird honked loudly before falling onto his side. Trying to right himself, he flapped a wing several times but then lay strangely still.

“I told you to get lost, not drop dead.”

Staring at the bird, Hazel realized she shouldn’t leave him lying in the middle of the street. But she didn’t want to touch him either. She went to the duck and gently nudged him with the toe of her tennis shoe. Dead as a dodo. Using the bottom of her shoe she indelicately rolled him off the road and onto the grass.

Studying the creature’s dead eyes, she remembered Tanner feeding pieces of his piecrust to the paddling of ducks before the rodeo. Had this duck been among those that ate Tanner’s pie?

She spun away, refusing to consider it any further. All she wanted to do was go home, find her dad there, and together, figure out what to do next.

But when she reached her house she remained on the sidewalk, afraid to get any closer. The house was dark—hostile in its emptiness. Clearly her dad wasn’t home. I’m not going in there alone. A whimper sounded from her throat. Was that me? She didn’t know what to do, or where to go. She turned in a complete circle, a sinking sensation in her belly. Where is everyone?

Reluctantly, she looked up at The Winslow. All the structure’s lights were blazing, which she took as a good sign. At least there were people inside, maybe even somebody who wasn’t sick. Besides, she needed to go back and check on Aaron, her grandmother, Daisy and Violet.

After she crossed Ruby Road, trudged up The Winslow’s steep driveway, and climbed five stone steps to the yard, she stood in the yellow glow cast from the pedestal gaslamps—distraught to discover that her grandmother’s hotel now looked menacing.

“What’s changed?” she entreated its tall windows. “What are you trying to tell me?”

That I should’ve never come back here. She sensed the hotel watching her with its bay window eyeball as she continued through the yard. That I should’ve left with Tanner.

She was startled to encounter Marlene Spainhower tucked into a corner of the porch. “Why are you out here by yourself?” Hazel asked. Marlene smelled gamey and Hazel brought her hand to her nose.

“Best to keep to myself,” Marlene whispered. “I don’t want to get it.”

It was obvious to Hazel that she had it. Even in the dark she could see that Marlene’s pupils were open too wide, that her cheeks burned with fever. But Hazel couldn’t tell her that. Instead, she went to the door and twisted the silver knob.

“You’ll catch it in there,” Marlene warned.

Hazel pushed open the heavy door and made her way through the lobby.

Ivy Hotchkiss still danced to Caleb Spainhower’s weeping guitar, while another man crawled on all fours along the perimeter of the octagon-shaped room, eyes intent on the black tile border, mumbling, “Fits nice fits nice fits nice—” He ceased crawling. “A little off. Bring me my square and level.” A rail-thin woman in a flower-print dress lay flat on her face on the red-carpeted staircase, as though she’d intended to head upstairs but collapsed in exhaustion after only three skinny-legged steps.

Somebody must be better by now, Hazel tried to convince herself.

She wiped damp palms on her shorts as she entered the ballroom. Brilliant light thrown from three crystal chandeliers illuminated the population of the long room—many more people than were here just hours ago. Heavy rugs from the lobby and hallways had been dragged in to cushion sore bodies from the hardwood floors. The podium used at town meetings was positioned at the back end of the room as if somebody planned to make a speech. It struck her as curious that there were no Mathers here. And nobody from Holloway Ranch.

Rose Peabody sat stick straight on the sofa by the fireplace—an improvement over the last time Hazel had seen her. She was staring at her reflection in the window, Owen no longer at her side.

Hazel picked her way across the ballroom and when she reached the velvet couch, she touched Rose on the forearm to get her attention.

Rose stiffened as if she’d been electrocuted and let out a surprised cry.

“I’m sorry.” Hazel pulled her hand away.

“What are we doing here?” Rose said. Sweat-drenched hair plastered her head and neck.

“Don’t you remember?” Hazel sat on the arm of the sofa.

“I don’t remember.”

“Are you feeling better?” Please, please, please say you’re feeling better.

“I’m seeing things.” Rose was pale and perspiring and shaking, her eyes as big as saucers. “Horrible things, Hazel.”

“They’re not real.”

“Black bears with no arms keep coming out of the woods to look at me through the window.” Rose mewled helplessly. “I think they want to eat me so they can grow their arms back.”

Hazel went to touch her again but quickly thought better of it. “No, they don’t, Rose. They’re not really there.” Yet Hazel found herself peering through the window at the dark trees.

Rose covered her eyes with her hands and moaned. “Wolves with heads as big as Molly’s entire body. They keep their snouts low to the ground, sniffing around.” She dropped her hands and looked at Hazel with desperation. “I’m afraid they’ll smell me.”

“Don’t worry. They won’t get in here. I promise.” So many promises Hazel had made now. They’ll prove hard to keep, she predicted.

Hazel worried then about Rose’s chocolate Lab; when had Molly last been fed? She remembered Sean tossing dinner rolls to Molly and Jinx outside the Crock Saturday morning and she’d yelled at him that the rolls would make the dogs sick—Jinx especially since he had already eaten a donut.

Sick dogs. Rolls from Rhone Bakery . . . suddenly she felt ill too.

Hazel scanned the ballroom before asking Rose, “Where’s Owen?”

“Owen,” Rose repeated, not understanding it to be a question. “Why isn’t the doctor here? Will you take me to the hospital?” Her eyes pleaded. “Will you, Hazel?”

Hazel didn’t know what to say to her. Images flashed through her mind of Doc Simmons running bow-legged into the night, of Tanner pointing at Sean’s apology on the granite wall, of her father slapping handcuffs onto Sean’s wrists—he doesn’t want to but he has no choice—while Sean looks directly at her and repeats, “I’ve always done everything for you.”

Hazel tried to stop trembling. “Rose, I can’t. My arm’s messed up. I can’t drive.”

Rose’s mouth turned down in despair.

“You’ll feel better tomorrow.” Hazel realized she was banking everything on that. They had to get better soon. It could only happen that way. “In the morning, you’ll feel better.”

Rose did not reply.

And Hazel could no longer look at her, into those Olive Oyl eyes, because those eyes would know Hazel wasn’t telling her the whole truth. So she turned and walked away from Rose on legs suddenly gone to jelly.

Gus Bolinger hadn’t moved since that afternoon from his green wing chair by the window. She’d never given much thought to him before, just another old guy around town. Except he had wild gray Einstein hair. James Bolinger’s grandpa. He taught history at school because he’d fought in the Korean War and he walked with a hitch from the bullet he’d taken to the shinbone during the Battle of Bloody Ridge.

Hoping he might be feeling better, Hazel went to him and kneeled. “Mr. Bolinger?”

Quietly he was saying, “I can’t see I can’t feel I can’t see . . .” He’d aged; the past few days had turned him into the spoils of an archaeological dig. And the anguish in his voice made her heart heavy. “I can’t feel,” he repeated.

“It’s going to be all right.” She patted his hand in what she hoped was a comforting gesture. “I promise.” Why the hell do I keep saying that? Now if he stayed blind and paralyzed she’d feel guilty forever and surely he’d haunt her for breaking her promise.

The man slumped in the matching chair next to Gus suddenly sat bolt upright and hissed at her: “Can you hear that, little girl? They’re breaking in. They’re coming to get us.”

I should’ve never come back. Hazel’s heart began to thump so loud it was a wonder she could hear anything over it.

“Where are the children?” Sprawled on the floor before the fireplace, a woman was repeating a lament of her own. “Where are the children?”

Hazel glanced around; the woman was right. There are no children here. She should find Aaron Adair and Violet and Daisy Rhone. Right away, panic squeezed her lungs.

“Where are the children?” the woman cried again.

Kohl Thacker stopped running in circles beneath the center chandelier long enough to answer her: “Hawkin Rhone got ’em.”

The woman wailed.

“All of ’em,” Kohl added.

“Didn’t we rid ourselves of him?” another woman asked.

“He’s back.”

Hazel’s heart launched another small attack. No one ever proved Hawkin Rhone guilty of poisoning anybody, but he’d been banished from Winslow all the same. “People saying he did it is all that mattered,” Sean had told her at Three Fools Creek a long, long time ago.

Alarmed, she dashed from the ballroom. I have to get rid of the bread—all of it! Where did they deliver Saturday morning? To Sean’s mom Honey here at the hotel, to Clemshaw Mercantile, to the Crock. Where else? Think, think!

She raced through the dining room toward the kitchen, knocking over a chair along the way and imagining Ben Mathers watching in horror as his wife choked and suffocated to death before his very eyes. Harmless escargot to everybody but Lottie Mathers. For her, the snails were poison. For her, fatal.

Hazel burst through the swinging kitchen door to find Honey Adair clutching the edge of the countertop and crying soft helpless sobs. Owen Peabody was also in the kitchen, standing in front of the open silverware drawer next to the stove. Spoons were lined singly along the countertop and Owen pointed to each in succession as he counted, “five six seven eight . . .”

Hazel went to his side. “What are you doing, Owen?”

He kept his eyes on the spoons as if not wanting to lose his place. “Taking inventory.”

“Why?” Hazel asked, though she was grateful he’d taken up such a harmless preoccupation.

“Because as soon as the water stops poisoning us, we’ll have to put everything back where it belongs,” he explained, sounding impatient, as if he resented the interruption. “We’ll need to know if anything is missing.”

He resumed counting while Hazel thought, It’s people we’re missing, not things.

Seeing Hazel had somehow made Honey start to cry even harder. Hazel crossed the kitchen and hugged her as best as she could with one arm and murmured soothing lies, “It’s okay, it’ll all be okay.” Honey’s sobs were contagious and Hazel had to force back her own tears. She couldn’t break down now.

“Aaghh!” Owen fumed in frustration. Then he took a deep breath, let it out in a huff, and started again. “One two three five seven eight nine . . .”

Honey pulled away from Hazel. “My sons are missing.”

“I’ll find them,” Hazel made yet another promise.

“Eighteen nineteen twenty-two twenty—aaahgh! One two . . .” The muscles in Owen’s Popeye arm flexed as he pointed at each uncooperative spoon: Lay there and be counted or I’ll fix you.

“Your grandmother,” Honey said then, “watch over her.”

Can seventeen-year-olds drop dead from heart attacks? Hazel wondered. She had a genetic predisposition. Her grandfather was only sixty-five when his hit. “Where is she?”

“Last time I saw her she was with Samuel.”

A fresh bolt of panic struck. Before she’d left that afternoon she told her grandmother that she’d be back soon with help and ordered her to lay low until then. Now Hazel shot up the servants’ staircase to the second floor. Help, Grandpa, she silently implored. If you’re up there guardian angeling, Grandpa, now is the time to help us.

When she reached the top step, she found Samuel Adair tearing it up, but Sarah was nowhere in sight. Obviously blind drunk, Sean’s father swerved down the hallway, smashing into side tables and knocking off their contents, slamming into photographs along the wall, cursing with a passion. He carried a baseball bat. Sean’s—she recognized it. She stared at it for a moment before realizing she was checking for blood, for signs he’d used it.

Noticing her, Samuel stopped dead. Then he squinted at her like a parody of a drunk, cocking his head this way and that as if it would sharpen his focus. “Ruby Winslow?” Holding the bat in swing position he took a few steps toward where she stood at the top of the staircase. “That you, Ruby?”

Hazel was afraid of that bat and those beet-red eyes. She couldn’t step away because the stairs were behind her. If she wanted to run down she’d have to turn her back on Samuel and he was within striking distance now.

“Not Ruby,” she managed to keep her voice steady, “Hazel. A real live Winslow.”

Samuel picked up a candy dish from the table and tossed it at her like a Frisbee. It bounced painfully off her hip and landed on the floor at his feet, not breaking but spilling mints across the Oriental rug. “Guess you’re real.” He didn’t sound entirely convinced.

“You need to go sleep it off, Samuel,” Hazel tried.

“Don’t you tell me what to do.” He took another step toward her.

“It’s late, Samuel, really late. Time for bed.” She took a step backward onto the staircase. Brained with a baseball bat would be a terrible way to go. She imagined it might take more than one swing. That or she might tumble to her death down the staircase. Either way, it would definitely hurt.

Running a hand across several days’ worth of beard he said, “I am bone tired.” Incredibly, he lowered the bat and turned away from her.

She was amazed he’d given in so easily and figured he must be even more stewed than usual. After he weaved back down the hallway and disappeared into the Adairs’ quarters she began to breathe again. But there was always tomorrow—always more to drink—so still she would worry about that bat.

Somehow she’d have to get Aaron out of there. She looked down the hallway, then up at the ceiling. “Aaron?” she asked in the quietest voice. “If you’re floating around out here and can hear me, go get your body and come back out to the hall.”

She stood still for a minute, believing it might actually happen, that the little boy would emerge from their living room in his cowboy pajamas.

When he didn’t she resigned herself to wait until she was certain Samuel had passed out before going in to retrieve him.

She tiptoed down the hallway to her grandmother’s rooms, praying that the girls had minded her and stayed put. She tried the door. Locked. Good.

She knocked softly. “Violet,” she whispered through the keyhole, “it’s me—let me in.”

After much hushed discussion behind the door, the lock turned and Violet cracked it open barely an inch. Confirming it was Hazel, she opened it just wide enough to let her squeeze in.

Relief washed over Hazel. Here were all three: Violet, Daisy, and Aaron. But she knew they couldn’t stay. The hotel was too dangerous now: desperate people, drunks with bats, no place for kids. They’re so small and breakable, Hazel thought, the girls in their silk gowns, Aaron in his short-sleeved PJs. None of them had on shoes.

The children had all the lights off and the kerosene lamp lit. In the winter the electricity always goes out in Winslow. During the first storm and every storm thereafter. Now the wick lamp that usually occupied her grandmother’s mantel sat on the outer hearth, casting yellow light upward onto their innocent faces. Boo glared at Hazel from beneath the vanity. Though the kids looked glad to see her, they kept their distance. In the flickering light of the oil lamp, Hazel figured she must look a fright.

“Are you sick too, Hazel?” Violet asked.

“No, no, I’m fine.” She smoothed her tangled hair and hiked up her drooping shorts. “Have you seen my grandmother?”

“Haven’t seen anybody ’cept Aaron. Maybe she’s hiding too.”

“I hope so. Here, sit.” Hazel positioned the three kids on the chenille bedspread. “I’m glad you’re all together. Listen, we have to leave here.”

Each nodded their head as though they already knew that.

“Remember how we play hide-and-go-seek?”

More grave nods.

“Let’s play it now, only I’m going to count to one million zillion so you need to stay hidden for a long time. Don’t come out till you hear me yell ‘olly olly oxen free.’ Just me. Understand?” Then she thought, Brilliant. Now if something happens to me, they’ll wither away in their hiding spots, waiting for a call that will never come. She chased the worry away. No time for it now.

“You, Daisy, especially,” Hazel continued, “stay put no matter how spooked you get.” Daisy usually came out of hiding as soon as she sensed anyone near her spot, the fear of getting caught by surprise (you’re it!) evidently worse than flat-out losing the game. Gently, Hazel took the little girl by the chin. “No matter what, okay?”

“Yes, Hazel.” Daisy was more solemn than any five-year-old in the history of Winslow. She ran her tiny fingers across the raised pattern on the yellow bedspread. “I’ll stay put.”

“Good girl.” Hazel placed a hand against her cheek. Then she looked at Violet. “I’m counting on you.” She felt terrible placing such a heavy burden on her—a mere seven-year-old. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair.

“Should we hide in the tower?” Violet had accepted the responsibility, brave girl.

“No!” Aaron said.

“No,” Hazel agreed. “Somewhere away from here, someplace you know better than anyone else.”

Violet cupped her hand around Aaron’s ear and whispered.

“Where’s it going to be?” Hazel asked.

“Can’t tell,” Violet said. “That’s not hide-and-go-seek.”

Hazel smiled. “Fair enough. But stay in town, all right? I have to be able to find you. Is it a good place?”

“It is,” Violet said and Aaron nodded in agreement.

Daisy and Boo continued to stare at each other.

“Good. Okay, then . . .” Hazel went to the door and opened it a bit, poking her head out. The hallway was empty. Not allowing herself any more time to think about it, any chance to change her mind or chicken out, she flung the door wide open and told the children, “Now. Go now!” She gestured with her hand, hurry hurry, then brought a finger to her lips, sshhh.

Violet was fighting with Boo, who had dug his nails into the rug when she tried to drag him out from underneath the vanity.

“Leave the cat,” Hazel said.

“I can’t!” Violet despaired. “He’s counting on me!”

“Okay okay, but hurry up!”

Violet finally got the better of the cat and gripped him tight in both arms as she led Daisy and Aaron out into the hall.

Aaron stopped just outside the door and looked back at Hazel, his eyes filled with panic. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

“No—now go!” And he started to cry when she scooted him away with a couple of pats to the behind. She watched them run the length of the hallway and then bob up and down the servants’ staircase until their tiny heads finally disappeared.

Hazel had to sit down. She was going to be sick or faint or something similarly unpleasant. So she sat where she had stood in the doorway and cradled her head in her hand and worried, Are they going to be okay? Please, please let them be okay.

And she still had no idea what had happened to her grandmother.

She rose to her feet and returned to the fireplace, where she carefully lifted the oil lamp and placed it back in its usual position on the mantle next to the photograph of Anabel holding Hazel on her lap, smiling at her baby while Hazel ogles the photographer (her dad, she’d been told.) Turning the knob on the base of the lamp, Hazel extinguished the image.

Feeling altogether alone, she dragged herself down the hallway on legs heavy with fatigue . . . past photographs of the hotel through the decades that had been knocked crooked along the wall, past upset furniture, past Samuel Adair snoring loud enough it was audible through closed doors.

Rather than descend the staircase as the children had, she walked up the creaky bare wood steps, the air surprisingly cool in the dim stairwell, until she reached the top floor of the tower—or Ghost HQ, as Aaron called it, as if all The Winslow’s lost spirits regularly congregated here to conjure up new ways to spook him.

“Friendly ghosts,” she addressed the round room when she entered. Was she trying to convince them or herself? Both, she concluded. She’d never been afraid like this before. Now it was the only emotion operating. “Friendly ghosts . . . Casper and Friends.”

Why are there no ghost animals? she wondered as she continued into the room. Perhaps there are those who linger, not understanding they’re dead. She hoped that Jinx wasn’t one of them. That if he were gone, he’d already passed on to a happy place with a steady supply of hotdogs and unstingy girls who love him without reservation.

The crystal glass remained on the floor where it had bounced to rest after Patience threw it against the window last night. “I tried to warn you,” Patience said then, “and now look. I’m sick, everybody’s sick.”

For once, Hazel marveled, you were right. For once—incredibly—her morbid imaginings had proven true.

She wondered where Patience was now. In fact, she didn’t know where anybody was and wished Winslow had a loud bell or siren to call everyone together at a predetermined location in case of emergency.

She walked to the arched window, touched the chip in the red glass, and looked out over downtown Winslow. Taillights receded down the hotel driveway and a few vehicles made their way along Fortune Way. Otherwise, the town was still and dark. Figuring she must be a strange sight standing at the floor-to-ceiling window, she raised her left hand in a claw and opened her mouth in a silent screech for the benefit of anyone who happened to be gazing up.

A click issued behind her.

“Grandma?” She hoped.

Then she turned and stepped on the crystal glass, skidding on it for a moment until it cracked beneath her tennis shoe against the hardwood floor. When she regained her balance she thought, That can’t be good luck. Patience would freak.

She bent her leg to inspect the bottom of her shoe, relieved to see that no shards of glass had punctured the sole.

Eyes searching the room, she asked, “Are you here, Grandma?”

Silence. Except in shadow, there was nowhere in the tower to hide.

Click.

Though not an especially loud or threatening noise, it disturbed Hazel enough to convince her to hightail it out of there. She had to recross the length of the tower to reach the stairway and was sure that whatever was clicking would reach out from the shadows and grab her by the hair and yank her back into its dark corner and do disagreeable things to her.

Friendly ghosts . . . Claustrophobia clutched at her as she kept moving toward the staircase that somehow grew farther away. Friendly my ass.

Finally she reached it—unclutched and unscathed—and ran down four flights of stairs, her feet barely resting on each step as she hastened out in a clamor. She didn’t stop to talk to Honey or Owen in the kitchen or Rose in the ballroom or dancing Ivy in the lobby. Rather, she dashed out the open front door and pulled it closed tight, relieved to shut in the horrors of the hotel behind it.

Gone was Marlene.

Instead, a man-sized shape lurked in the deepest pocket of the porch.

“You can’t leave,” his voice thundered and the wood slats creaked and groaned beneath his weight as he came for her. “Nobody leaves.”

Hazel turned to run.

A lariat lay strewn at the top of the steps. She tried to avoid it but her forward momentum was irreversible and her feet immediately became tangled in the rope. Losing her balance, she crashed against the porch banister. When her ribcage connected with the rail, a fresh new pain introduced itself to her battered body.

I should’ve never come back!

She scrambled forward and then raced through the grassy yard and down the stone steps and onto the drive, feeling nips at her back the entire time, claws reaching for her hair.

She ran faster. Her ribs burned.

No wonder Dad’s hiding, she thought. The monsters in town are scarier than the monsters in the woods.

She made a tight right turn onto Ruby Road, glad to be off the gravel and on solid ground, and begged her screaming legs to just get her home.

They obeyed. And dark and unwelcoming as the house was, she tore open the front door and then slammed and locked it shut.

She flipped on the entry light. With her good arm she leaned against the hall-tree and tried to catch her breath, her heart exploding in her chest.

Then she raised her head to look in the mirror.

The agony of her throbbing elbow and traumatized ribcage had caused her to go white. Sweat streamed from her forehead down her cheeks; her freckles stood stark in her wan skin. Her long hair was snarled and matted, her tank top filthy. She stared at the rainbow spanning her chest and thought, This shirt is ridiculous.

When she returned her gaze to the reflection of her face, she was jolted by the look of terror in her eyes—like the trapped raccoon her father once freed from the Mercantile’s storeroom. The animal had been soiled in the pastel remnants of the Frankenberry cereal he’d torn open to eat, and his eyes were beyond panic; they were without hope.

Several long blinks did nothing to alter her manic expression.

“What if somebody doesn’t come up to Winslow soon?” she voiced her worst fear to her reflection.

Then she glanced at the brass letter slot next to the front door. “What about the mail? Daryl comes on Thursdays . . .”

Cradling her arm in the sling, she sank to the floor—and a misery of dread spread over her like a filthy blanket.

Will we make it till Thursday?





MIDNIGHT

DARK DARK DARK

“We’ll sneak the back way,” Violet told Aaron and Daisy. “It’s the very best way.”

They’d left the hotel by the side door (after Aaron tried to talk to his mommy in the kitchen but she didn’t know him) and then hid in the trees ’cause they heard grown men out front stomping on the porch. When the men wouldn’t leave, Violet gave up on going the front way and took them onto the dark path through the woods. Now she was paying attention like she knew she should ’cause she was in charge of them and couldn’t get them lost.

Boo squirmed in Violet’s arms but she held tight. “Be good, kitty, be good.”

They were in Hazel and the Sheriff’s backyard now and the house looked dark and mean and the moon was fat but not full so they walked fast through the backyard and squeezed through the hedge separating their yard from Patience Mathers’ house.

Patience Mathers is pretty, Violet thought. Snow White kind of pretty. But there was a feeling around her that always made Violet a little nervous and she never wanted her to babysit. Hazel was pretty too, but in a different way and her eyes changed color depending on what mood she was in. That was what she’d told her and Violet believed it. Hazel was what it’s like to have a big sister, Violet decided. Somebody to look out for you, somebody who’s always on your side.

When she glanced at her own little sister beside her, Daisy gave her a big gummy smile.

You could use some front teeth, Violet thought but was polite and didn’t say it out loud because Mommy said if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

Lights were on in the Mathers’ house and yellow beamed out into the backyard. Patience’s mommy Constance worked in the yard a lot wearing her garden gloves with butterflies on them and there were little pots of purple and blue pansies around the back porch. Maybe we should hide here.

No—she remembered Hazel saying to hide someplace they knew better than anyone else could.

Stopping to think was a big mistake because Boo spotted Patience’s cat Ajax under the porch and he growled and cried all in the same noise and let out his claws and scratched Violet’s arms as he jumped from them and ran after the black cat.

“Boo!” she called. “Tict tict tict,” she clicked with her tongue.

But he was gone. It was okay; Boo knew his way home. One time they were driving all the way down by Matherston Cemetery and they saw Boo walking up the side of Winslow Road. She didn’t know where he’d been or what he’d been doing but when they stopped to pick him up, he was all wrung out, Daddy said, and he and Mommy smiled at each other like they had an adult secret.

Now they kept going through Patience’s flowery yard then went very fast past the back of the Ambrose house because nobody lived there and it was dark dark dark.

It was the best way for them to go, Violet knew, only Daisy kept stopping and saying, “Look! Look!” If she said it again Violet was gonna sock her. She yanked Daisy’s hand, the one wearing the red sparkly ring, and dragged her through Dr. Foster’s backyard. He was a nice man, she remembered her mom saying, but nobody lived there anymore either and she wanted to get outta there quick.

“C’mon, Aaron,” she told him. Even in the moonlight she could see he was scared. “C’mon,” she said again ’cause she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Maybe he felt embarrassed because he was still in his pajamas.

Violet started to feel scared again too . . . she didn’t understand what was going on. Think happy thoughts, her mom always told her when she was afraid, like when she had to get a shot. So she thought about when Boo was a baby kitten (just a teensy pouf of gray fur), and about playing on the swings in the park for so long she would dream all night about swinging, and about her mommy tucking her and Daisy in at bedtime—snug as bugs in a rug—and she felt better.

It felt better to be out of the hotel too. What was Mr. Adair so mad about, anyway? Mrs. Adair is nice; she gives us treats even when it isn’t a special occasion day. Sean’s nice too. Violet knew that Aaron would feel safer if only he could be with his big brother. It was weird, she realized then, that Sean and Hazel weren’t together like usual. Violet hoped that when she got older she’d have a cute boyfriend too. Maybe Aaron, maybe Timmy Hotchkiss.

But Aaron’s dad was really mean tonight. Violet could hear him yelling all the way down the hallway and when she heard a door open and then slam shut again, she leaned her head out into the hall and saw Aaron standing there all alone and told him, “Psst! Come in here.”

She couldn’t think about her own daddy right now, wouldn’t let herself think about her mommy. “La-la-la,” she sang loud to hide it away.

“La-la-la,” Daisy echoed.

“As I was walking by the lake,” Violet chanted and Daisy laughed. “I met a little rattlesnake.”

Aaron gave her a funny look but she kept going ’cause it shut up Daisy with her “Look, look!” and kept Violet’s mind off other things.

She and Daisy chanted together: “I gave him so much jelly cake, it made his little belly ache! One, two, three,” they shouted as they ducked under the trees and into the next yard, “out goes she!”

Daisy giggled like crazy, just like whenever their daddy tickled her feet.

She’s a good girl, Violet thought. I’m a good girl.

When they entered the last backyard on Park Street behind old Mr. Mathers’ mansion, Violet shushed Daisy. Every light in the tall house was on, it looked like, all the way up to the attic. But she never even thought about stopping there no matter how bright it was. Because Ben Mathers was not nice—he yelled at them all the time, even when they were playing quietly.

He was yelling now too. And wearing goggles and a funny hat.

As they tiptoed past the back of the house, Violet could see him through the mudroom window talking to some man whose back was to them (but it looked like Cal from the Fish ’n Bait maybe) and she heard Mr. Mathers yell, “How the devil else will we put a stop to this?”

And the other man, Cal maybe, held up his hands like he didn’t agree but didn’t want to fight about it.

“Why do we let them get away with it?” Mr. Mathers kept on shouting. “Time after time! It has got to stop!”

Violet looked at Aaron and he looked back at her really worried. This wasn’t like when they dare each other to steal candy from the Mercantile or pretend Old Lady Winslow is a witch.

This is really scary.

“The shit’s hit the fan,” her daddy would say.

When they reached the back of the bakery, she noticed lights on upstairs in her own house . . . shining out from the bathroom and her and Daisy’s bedroom. The front door hung open. She thought about hiding inside but then realized, Isn’t that the first place anybody’d look?

Leading them up the rise in the opposite direction of the house, Violet resolved that when they made it there, they’d hide really good. Like Hazel told them to.

It’s the best place to hide, she thought. We play there every day. Nobody else, only us. So it’s the very best place.

She just hoped Hawkin Rhone wasn’t anywhere around.