The Creeping

Forty-five minutes after Dad’s left, I convince Sam that I’ll be fine alone until morning. He turns at the last moment on the threshold, propping the door open with his tennis shoe. He smiles and says something sweet—probably that he loves me—but I don’t hear him. Because in that moment a family passes through the hallway. They’re framed by the door for only a split second. The last to pass, a small girl lagging behind, cranes her neck for a better look at me. She scrunches up her freckled nose and smiles, revealing gaps from missing front teeth. As her mom ducks back to tow her away, her mop of red ringlets looks green in the fluorescent light. The door swings shut and she’s gone, and I hear Daniel’s voice on a loop in my head: I see Jeanie everywhere. I wonder if I will too?

I spend two days in the hospital. Hours spent staring at the yellowed, sagging ceiling tiles while Dad is at work and Sam is at BigBox. Hours of restless sleep where I awake sputtering for air and clawing at my pillow. Hours where I struggle with what Sam said. I know there is no ancient beast; I know who killed Jeanie and Mrs. Talcott. I think I know who killed Jane Doe. I know that Betty Balco’s kidnapper must have been human; I know that he likely took the other missing girls and that he’s dead, rotting in the ground.

The knowing doesn’t stop the wondering. Not only because it’s more painful to accept the very human appetites haunting Savage. It is. Also, there’s a restlessness in my blood, making my veins itchy. I can’t shake that elated and wild grin I wore in the Polaroid any more than I can shake Jeanie’s bleak stare. I can’t stop wondering if I was braver and more alive before Jeanie vanished and if losing her snuffed something out in me.

But mostly, I’m restless because deep down at my roots, I fear what Sam does. How do you disprove an ancient evil lurking in the woods? Even if we search Norse Rock, we can’t search every dark nook and cranny of the forest. We can’t traverse every narrow passage way in the undergrowth. We can’t explore every mine shaft and every cave and every aerie in every treetop. How do we know that the Creeping isn’t there, suckling on a little girl’s finger bone?





Chapter Twenty-Nine


I sit swinging my legs along the side of my hospital gurney. Strike that. Not my hospital gurney anymore, since I’m waiting for Dad to pick me up and bring me home. The leg swinging makes me look upbeat and less like a traumatized schizo than cowering under the bed would, and if I’m going to get out of here, I can’t look like I’m twitchy with PTSD. Trust me, inside I am.

Zoey went home yesterday. Before Caleb showed up at Cole’s party, Zoey did a keg stand. After he arrived, she tried to drown her suspicion in Jell-O shots. Zoey knew Caleb was hiding something. It’s why she bailed on Sam and me the night before. She waited all evening for him to leave the house. And when he finally did, she went through his drawers and came up with a strange black candle and a hunting knife he hadn’t cleaned. Right there, barefoot in the middle of Caleb’s childhood room, Zoey realized her brother had taken the head off the cat in the cemetery. As children Caleb and Daniel had seen Griever sacrifice a dog. It was the event that made them want to offer a smear of blood to stave off the monster.

Eleven years later, with the decapitated tabby cat in the cemetery, Caleb was still trying to give the monster its sacrifice. Sam was right: It wasn’t Griever.

Zoey waited to confront Caleb, but he never came home. The next day she texted him about Cole’s party; she told him Cole was asking about him, and he took the bait. After he arrived, Zoey dragged Caleb outside to confront him. She probably could have handled herself with only Caleb, but he had called for backup once he realized that she wasn’t going to quit. Zoey said she didn’t feel afraid until the moment Caleb’s knuckles crunched against her face. When his fist came away, she saw how Daniel was looking at her, like he was going to finish the job.

For two days I’ve tried not to picture Zoey flailing through the woods, alcohol poisoning setting in, running for her life from her brother. I asked her why she didn’t tell me about Caleb. She said she couldn’t say what she was thinking about her brother out loud until she spoke with Caleb about it, until she knew for sure. I get that.

I was supposed to be released with her, but the skin around my stitches was swollen. They kept me another day to be sure the gash wasn’t infected. I close my eyes and rub my temples. No infection, but I do have a bulldozing headache. Daniel’s face flashes across the inside of my eyelids. I see Jeanie everywhere. So do I.

“You sleepwalking?” Shane interrupts my nightmare train of thought.

My eyelids snap open. His clothes are rumpled, and the lavender bulges under his eyes rival my own. “Yeah right, as if I sleep anymore.”

His mouth sets in a bleak line. “Your dad said I could pick you up.”

I shrug and jump off the bed, my sneakers slapping the tile floor and my head spinning.

“Should I call a nurse?” Shane grabs my elbow as I teeter.

“No, the painkillers make the room spin,” I explain hastily. I want out of here.