I sighed. So much for keeping a low profile. I should have used a fake name.
This had been happening more and more often since the season of Monsters Among Us had aired. I’d always been recognized and fawned over at conventions and conferences, but outside of that, before the TV show, most people hadn’t had a clue who I was or what I did, which was exactly how I liked it. Now I had total strangers approaching me, running up to me in grocery stores and gas stations, feeling like they actually knew me, asking to take selfies with me. It was unsettling.
The kid walked closer. “I’m a huge fan! I’ve been following you since the early days—way before the TV show, before the podcast even, when you just had the blog. When I was a little kid, I formed this monster club, totally inspired by you! We went out in the woods looking for bigfoot and stuff. You’re, like… amazing!”
I smiled gratefully, but I hoped not too warmly. “Thank you.”
Thought: Now, be a good boy and go away.
“God, I can’t believe you’re here!” He moved closer, looked down at my computer. “Are you working on a podcast right now?”
“Finishing one up,” I said, snapping the laptop closed.
“Louisiana, right?” he asked.
I nodded.
“The Honey Island swamp monster,” he went on. “Did you see it?”
I shook my head. “No, but I think I heard it.”
“Did you get a recording?”
“Unfortunately not.”
He shrugged. “Next time,” he said as he rocked back on his heels, smiling at me. Skinny, red-haired, and freckled. I guessed he was seventeen or eighteen, tops. “You’re here about Rattling Jane, right?”
I smiled. “You guessed it.”
“Wanna know what I know?” he asked hopefully. “Interview me? I’ve got time right now.”
“I’d love to.” Though the last thing I wanted to do was encourage this kid, I figured it couldn’t hurt to get a local teen’s take on Rattling Jane. In a place this small, chances were that he knew the girl who’d gone missing.
“Don’t you need your recorder or something?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. I got up and went to the van for the digital recorder and mics, bringing everything out to the picnic table, where I plugged in the mics and set them up on stands for each of us. I flipped everything on and did a little test to check the levels.
When I was satisfied, I gave him the thumbs-up and said, “This is Lizzy Shelley. It’s the twentieth of August. I’m here on Chickering Island with…” I looked at the campground worker.
“Dave. Dave Gibbs, but people here on the island call me Skink.”
“Skink?”
“Yeah, I’m, like, this big reptile guy. I’ve got over twenty lizards.” He was beaming with pride.
“Wow,” I said sincerely.
He nodded excitedly. “Been keeping them since I was a little kid. The first one I got, Norman, he was a blue-tongued skink. I named him after Norman Bates in Psycho. I guess I was kind of a quirky kid. Lizards. Monster Club. Horror movies.” His green eyes twinkled, and a dimple in his left cheek appeared when he smiled.
I grinned back at him, thinking how much my brother would have loved this guy. The young version of my brother, not Charlie.
“So, Skink, what can you tell me about Rattling Jane?”
He leaned in closer to the microphone, looking very serious. “Well, there’re lots of stories. Let’s see, to start with, she comes up out of the lake and is made out of fish bones, driftwood, weeds, and old feathers—she uses whatever she can find in the water to give herself a body to come up on land. When the wind blows through her, she, like, rattles and clatters like a bunch of wind chimes. That’s how she got her name. They say you hear her coming before you see her.”
I shivered. I didn’t like this image, not one bit—a creature with no form of its own, assembled from random bits of detritus. The ghostlike monsters always got to me the most. But I thought fear was a good thing—the day I stopped being afraid and on guard was the day I’d let my defenses down. Fear kept me on my toes.
“If you walk around the island,” Skink went on, “you’ll see sculptures of her, like scarecrows with sea glass and old silverware and stuff hanging off of them to make noises. And they’re all looking out at the lake. It’s supposed to be good luck.”
“Have you ever seen her?”
He shook his head, looking forlorn. “No. But they say you can call her. Bring something shiny to the water and call and she’ll come. And she’ll hand you a pebble from down at the bottom of the lake. Hold on to that pebble and make a wish and you’ll get what you wish for.”
“But you haven’t tried?”
“Sure, I’ve tried! I’ve tried plenty. I’ve been going down to the water and calling my whole life practically, but she’s never come for me.” He kicked at the ground with his tan work boot.
I nodded understandingly. “Do you know anyone who’s seen her?” I asked.
“Plenty of people claim they have.” He looked up at me, lowered his voice. “That girl who disappeared a couple days ago, Lauren Schumacher, you heard about that, right?”
I shook my head, feigning ignorance. “No. Tell me.”
“Well, she said she’d seen her. That she’d seen her a couple of times. She had the pebble and everything. Showed it to people in town, friends.”
“So Lauren’s local?”
“Nah. Tourist. From Massachusetts. Her family has rented a place here for a few weeks every summer for years, though.”
“She had friends here, then?”
“Kids she hung out with. Other summer people, but some locals. She showed them the pebble, told them she’d met Rattling Jane, but I don’t think anyone really believed her. They thought it was just for attention. She talked a lot of shit, this girl. Always trying to sound tough and impress people.”
“Did you know her well?”
“A little. I mean, the kids she hung out with, they’re friends of mine, so I’d see her around with them. We hung out a couple times.”
I gestured for him to go on.
“Everyone says she ran away. Trouble at home and stuff like that. But me, I’m not so sure.”
“What do you think happened?”
He rubbed his chin. “Maybe a girl like that, in trouble all the time, smoking pot down by the docks, fighting with her parents, maybe she’s exactly the kind of girl Rattling Jane would show herself to, you know? ’Cause no one’s gonna believe her, right?”
I nodded. Maybe this guy was smarter than he looked.
When he spoke again, his voice was so low it was practically a whisper. And before he said the words, he looked around to be sure no one was listening. “I think maybe Rattling Jane got her.”
“Got her?” A lump formed in my throat.
He chewed his lip worriedly. “She takes people sometimes. Drags them back down into the water. No one ever sees them again.”
Vi
June 10, 1978
THE BASEMENT WAS strictly off-limits. You had to be invited down, and that only happened when Gran was offering certain lessons. Dissections and chemistry experiments were done in the basement. And studying things under the microscope. But the rule was they were never, ever to come down without permission. The basement was Gran’s realm, her workshop and laboratory, and the only place in the entire house they were forbidden to enter.
Vi crept slowly down the old wooden stairs, which let out little warning creaks with each step: Intruder! they seemed to say. She held tight to the smooth wooden railing, smelled formaldehyde, bleach, stale cigarette smoke. Her heart was beating fast. She wanted to turn back, but knew she couldn’t. She needed to find a clue about Iris. Something, anything to help her figure out who she was and where she came from. And the basement seemed like the best place to start.
Vi stepped onto the cement floor, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light. The fluorescent tubes overhead seemed to pulsate, growing bright then dim. She moved beneath them, listening to their hum until she was sure she could hear words, the God of Clues whispering: This way, this way, you’re getting warmer!