“You mean, with people who believe in ghosts and stuff? What was she, like, a medium or something?”
“She wasn’t just a spiritualist—not in the traditional sense anyway. She claimed that the dead could really come back. Not like ghosts, but with actual flesh-and-blood bodies.”
Ruthie got a chill; she looked down at the photo of Sara on the back of the book.
“But I think she’s most famous for how she died,” Buzz continued. “And the journals her niece published, they read like a goddamn real-life murder mystery.”
“All it says in the introduction is something about her having been brutally murdered,” Ruthie said.
“I’ll say!”
“So what happened?” she asked.
Buzz scowled at her. “Are you sure you want to know?”
Ruthie nodded, seeing that he was clearly bursting to tell her. Besides, how bad could it be?
He took in a breath. “Okay. She was found in the field behind her house—I guess I should say, behind your house.” He paused for a second here, watching her, knowing he was creeping her out, and enjoying every second.
“She’d been skinned,” he said, making his voice as eerily Vincent Price–like as he could. “Peeled like a freaking grape. And you know the most messed-up part? They say her skin was never found.”
Ruthie squirmed, fought the instinct to give him a girlish Ewww! “I don’t believe it,” she said, sitting up straight to finish the last swallow of beer. “That’s totally made up!”
“No,” Buzz said, holding up two fingers, “Scout’s honor. They said it was her husband, Martin, who did it. The town doctor, who was also Martin’s brother, found him right beside her body, holding a gun, covered in blood and half crazy. He shot himself right in front of his brother.”
Buzz’s eyes were big and glistening. He was just as excited as when he was telling one of his alien stories.
“There’s more, too. My grandpa, he said his dad told him that after she died people would sometimes see Sara walking through town late at night.”
“What, like, her ghost?” Ruthie felt the same way about ghosts as she did about UFOs.
“No. Like some actual person all dressed up in her skin!”
“Okay, you’ve officially crossed the line. That’s beyond gross. Not to mention obviously bullshit!”
“It’s true! Ask anyone. There were some weird deaths, and people blamed Sara—or whatever it was walking around in her skin. So everyone in the village started leaving gifts out on their porches for her—food and coins, jars of honey. She’d walk through town collecting them late at night. Every full moon, the whole town would put stuff out for her. Some people, old-timers like Sally Jensen out on Bulrush Road? They’re still doing it.”
Ruthie shook her head in disbelief. “No way!”
“I’ll prove it. Next full moon, you and I will take a ride around town. I’ll show you the offerings set out here and there on porches and doorsteps.”
“So how come I’ve never heard any of this before?”
He shrugged, set down his empty beer bottle, and leaned back into the bed, hands clasped behind his head. “I guess people don’t talk about it all that much. My grandpa only mentioned it once, when he was good and drunk one Thanksgiving. He was legitimately scared.”
Ruthie shook her head, lay back in the bed beside Buzz, and closed her eyes. It had been a long, exhausting day. She just needed to rest for a minute.
Suddenly she was back in Fitzgerald’s, holding her mother’s hand. The fluorescent light was flickering above them, growing steadily dimmer.
“What do you choose, Dove?” asked her mother, who held her hand a little too tightly. The bakery seemed to be shrinking around them, the walls closing in.
Ruthie stared at the rows of cakes and cookies and pointed at the pink cupcake. The ceiling was lower now.
Then she looked up to see her mother smiling down. And it was the stranger again—a tall, thin woman with tortoiseshell-framed glasses shaped like cat’s eyes. The bakery wasn’t much bigger than a closet now, and everything had gotten very dark. The only source of light was the glass case that held the cupcakes, which seemed to sparkle and glow.
Ruthie felt that old familiar panic at being in such a small, tight place. She was breathing too fast, doing an openmouthed panting like a dog.
“Good choice, Dove,” the woman said, then reached around the back of her head and pulled on a zipper. Her whole mommy disguise came peeling off, leaving a sack of red oozing flesh with a hole for a mouth.
Ruthie tried to scream, but couldn’t. She gasped herself awake, heart hammering.
She blinked hard. She and Buzz were lying on her mom’s bed, on top of the covers. Buzz was snoring softly. The light was still on, glaring down like an eye. She caught movement off to her right side—something in the closet. She turned; a shadow moved. The cat? No, it was too big to be Roscoe. She sat up, drawing in a sharp breath; from the back corner of the closet she saw the glint of two eyes.