The girl known as Iris is also in foster care. Attempts to learn about her background have been unsuccessful. Dr. Hutchins reported that Dr. Hildreth brought her to the Inn herself. He claimed he did not know where she’d come from. Although whatever documentation there might have been about Iris was destroyed, it is clear she was part of the Mayflower Project. The child bears scars of both open-heart surgery and brain surgery. She has no memory of her life before the Inn.
Patient S—a.k.a. Violet Hildreth—disappeared without a trace. The last time she was seen was the night of the fire: July 28, 1978.
Where does a thirteen-year-old girl on her own go?
No real records remain that could tell us who she truly was. No proof that she even existed at all. No paper trail.
The police put little effort into finding her.
Using the few notes I had from Dr. Hildreth’s surviving files and my own research into the remaining members of the “Templeton family,” I believe I have identified Patient S.
Here’s what I discovered.
On October 3, 1974, a small mobile home in Island Pond, Vermont, burned down, killing Daniel Poirier; his wife, Lucy; and their older daughter, Michelle. Their younger daughter, Susan, was never found. It was reported that Susan had been sent to live with family out of state. I tracked down her birth certificate and second-grade class picture. I am convinced that this girl, Susan Poirier, born September 3, 1965, in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, is Patient S.
I am also convinced that she is out there still. That she may, one day, hold a copy of this book in her hands.
* * *
Susan, if you’re reading: You are Susan Poirier. Your second-grade teacher, Mrs. Styles, remembers you as the smartest girl in the class, bright and cheerful and full of questions. You have family in the Northeast Kingdom still—aunts, uncles, cousins. None of them blame you for the things that happened. All of them hope that you will one day come home.
Lizzy
August 21, 2019
DON’T MOVE,” I ordered, my voice a croak.
The monster turned toward me, not looking very monstrous at all.
And the girl turned too, swiveling her head around, the hair on one side cut short, the other long.
“Hello, Monster Hunter,” Vi said, smiling. She had short, dark hair flecked with gray, a few wrinkles around her brown eyes. She was trim, muscular beneath her green T-shirt. She had on jeans and leather boots. She looked so… ordinary. And so much like her thirteen-year-old self that I was startled.
“Drop the knife,” I ordered, aiming the gun right at her chest.
The monster continued smiling and held up the pair of scissors she had in her hand to show me before dropping them. They clattered to the floor.
I looked down at the floor, covered in wisps of blond hair with purple tips.
She’d been giving Lauren a haircut.
“Step away from the girl, Vi.”
The monster gaze me a quizzical look, took three steps backward, her hands raised in the air. “I haven’t heard anyone call me by that name since you did last, right here.”
“Lauren!” Skink cried from behind me, running for the girl who was standing now, taking off the sheet. She was wearing yoga pants, a T-shirt. Other than the funky half-finished haircut, she looked absolutely fine.
“Skink?” She stepped forward and embraced the boy. “Oh my God! What are you doing here?”
“I came to save you. Well,” he said, smiling sheepishly, “Lizzy and I did.” Then he demanded, “Did she hurt you?”
“No,” the girl said.
“Drug you? Hypnotize you?”
“Um, no. Nothing like that.”
“I don’t get it,” Skink said. “What did she do?”
“She saved me.”
I still had the gun pointed at Vi. “Skink, I’d like you to take Lauren out of the room, please. Go back upstairs and wait for me there.”
“Really,” Lauren said, “there’s no need for all this. I’m fine. Better than fine, actually. I mean, I’m sure my hair looks a little ridiculous right now, but that’s kinda your fault, right?” She laughed.
“Take her upstairs, Skink,” I ordered. “Now.”
The two teens left the room.
“Down to you and me, Iris,” Vi said. “Just like old times.”
“No one calls me that anymore.”
“I’m sorry. Lizzy, then. Lizzy Shelley. A beautiful name. I’m happy to see you. I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
“For what, exactly?”
“To show you. To show you what I’ve become. Isn’t that why you’re here? Why you’ve hunted me down? You’re very clever, you know. Catching on. Following me around the country. And now we’ve come full circle, haven’t we? Back here, where it all began. Really, it just seems perfect.”
“Were you going to kill her in front of me?”
Vi laughed. “Is that really what you think?”
“I think at least ten girls have gone missing, never to be seen again,” I said. “If you’re not killing them, then what—”
“Some monsters,” Vi interrupted, “use their powers for good. Please, come sit. I have something to show you.”
She bent down to reach into the pack beside her, and I yelled, “Stop! You need to keep your hands where I can see them.”
Vi put her hands above her head. “Fine. Will you please get my laptop out for me, then? I don’t have any weapons.”
She shoved the pack toward me, and I peered in. Yes, a laptop. Some apples and granola bars, a first aid kit and a flashlight. I pulled out the computer, handed it over.
“May I sit down?” Vi asked.
I nodded. Vi took a seat on a pile of blankets on the floor, opened the computer on her lap, started typing.
“Here,” she said. “Look.”
I stepped closer, just behind Vi, and looked down at the screen.
Vi had opened to a page showing a woman in business attire, a profile page of some sort. Claire Michaels. Forty-four years old, executive at Livewire Multimedia in Burbank, California. Married with two kids. All her contact info.
Vi flipped to another profile page, another woman. Jessica Blankenship, thirty-six, a nurse midwife in Akron, Ohio. Single.
“What is this?” I asked. “Some kind of dating app?”
“Look at the bottom of the pages,” Vi said. She flipped back to Claire Michaels. I leaned closer. There, in little letters at the bottom of the page: FKA Jennifer Rothchild.
The name pinged in my brain. I looked at the photo again of the woman in the white collared shirt and blazer, frosted hair, full makeup.
Jennifer Rothchild had been the monster’s first victim. She’d disappeared in the summer of 1988 after claiming to have met a bigfoot-type creature in the woods of her little town in Washington State. She was never heard from again.
“Look,” Vi said, clicking to another page, showing a photo of Jennifer Rothchild at thirteen. The one they’d circulated to the media and put on posters when she went missing. Vi tapped again so that the photo of thirteen-year-old Jennifer Rothchild was next to forty-four-year-old Claire Michaels. Same heart-shaped face, same blue eyes, same little dimple in the left cheek. The same person.
I put the gun back in the holster, dropped down to my knees on the floor beside Vi, took hold of the laptop with both hands, using the track pad to click through one profile after another. All the adult versions of girls who’d been taken. Each profile had the FKA name and photograph: Vanessa Morales, Sandra Novotny, Anna Larson. I knew those names, those photos so well—those ten missing girls. I had a whole folder stuffed full of information on them—cataloging my desperate attempts to find out what had happened to them. But there they were, all found. All living good lives with new names: an executive, a doctor, a marine biology professor, a filmmaker. And there were more than ten, girls I didn’t even know about. Girls who’d wandered away from their teenage lives and shown up as successful adults with new names.
“I don’t understand,” I said.