The Creeping

He tugs the undershirt up and over his head. I reach for him. He kisses my neck, brushing his lips over my collarbone. I arch my back. I quiver. But mostly I smile. Through every single second, through every kiss, through every half moan, even when it’s uncomfortable at first, I smile because despite everything—monsters and men—I love Sam.

It’s still dark when Sam lifts his weight from the mattress.

“Hella Stella,” he murmurs, sending warm currents through me. “I have to go. Call me when you wake up in the morning.” Eyes half-lidded, I nod into my pillow, still smiling dreamily, completely unafraid of what tomorrow will bring.





Chapter Thirty-One


Four weeks later Sam parks the wagon at the foot of Jeanie’s old drive. We keep low to the ground, moving along the edge of the wood. Zoey’s a shadow at my heels, and Sam’s close behind her. Outstretched branches catch and pluck at my hoodie. It’s a half hour before the sun breaks over the horizon. You’d think sneaking around in the small hours of the morning would have me clutching Sam. It doesn’t. Thanks to Shane, I don’t wonder anymore.

Three weeks and six days ago Shane found six case files for missing girls in the warehouse where old police records are stored. One of them was Betty Balco’s; all were from the 1930s. All girls were taken from the Old Norse Trail or in the woods near their homes. Shane was right: There were suspects never made public. One was a history teacher. The other was a naturalist working for the forestry division in Blackdog State Park. Both could have known the Norse story, and both hiked Old Norse Trail frequently. The investigating detective was so certain of their guilt that he spent weeks trailing them, waiting to catch them in the act. He never did.

The files were thick with notes and interviews. A few were given by the missing girls’ friends and relatives. Although none witnessed the abductions, they were with them in the minutes before. The interviewees spoke of a quiet falling over the woods, except for rushes of movement in the undergrowth. They said their friends felt they were being watched for days leading up to their vanishing. The detective concluded that the men stalked their victims before taking them. Several more interviewees, neighbors and adults, mentioned a legend they grew up hearing. It told of a predator living in the woods, craving a certain kind of little girl. Another recounted almost verbatim the Norse story Shane’s grandma told him. Dottie Griever, Old Lady Griever’s mother, told the detective that Betty wasn’t the first to go missing. She said another was taken when she’d been a girl; the detective could never substantiate the claim.

As Shane and I pored over those yellowed case files, I kept thinking about him telling me that the monster’s only real if I let it be. That’s true, you know. Caleb gave it life. Griever gave it life. Even Daniel allowed it to breathe a little. Shane did more digging on the suspects. The same warehouse had a file on the schoolteacher. On his deathbed he confessed to all six kidnappings and killings. I decided not to give the monster life even before Shane told me.

Zoey and I are wearing black, because you obviously wear black while sneaking around town like phantom menaces charged with restoring modern-day sensibility. Sure the hatchet I took from Dad’s toolshed looks medieval, Sam’s toting what amounts to an iron sickle, and Zoey has a shovel, but we’re here in the name of reason. Caleb’s arrest and Daniel’s death caused a unique sort of aftermath; a distinctly different shape from the lost years.

Someone has to stop the monster hunters and tourists from flooding our small streets with busloads of “believers” fresh from whatever haunted amusement park or Sasquatch safari they’ve come from; the hour-long news specials airing about Savage; the tabloids printing salacious front-page stories about “Monster-Gate” and “the Savage Killers.”

Dad and Shane say people aren’t always rational, and the sensationalist news coverage is whipping up fervor for horror stories. Sam got all historical: “Think about McCarthyism or the Satanic Panic of the eighties and nineties. If you can make people think their neighbors are communist super spies and their teachers devil worshippers, it’s also possible to make them believe there’s an ancient monster in Savage, feeding on redheads.” He has a point.