The Creeping

Zoey ducks each time one flies near. “I don’t get why we couldn’t have done this in Jeanie’s front yard,” she whines. She glances over her shoulder, hand on her hip, an icy-blue eye blinking at me above dirt like warrior paint on her cheek. “It’s uncivilized out here. And besides, it’s not like Jeanie will know.”


I look down at the Polaroid. I’ve left sweaty thumbprints on the glossy finish. “I know, Zo. But this just feels right.” I shake my head to clear it. If I’m going to find the right spot in this expanse of woods, I have to focus. Even though I don’t remember exactly where it happened, my body wants to move in a certain direction. I’m trusting instinct. “I think we’re too far west.” I pause and survey the copse of trees around us. “Yeah, let’s move east,” I call up to Zoey.

“Okay, Wilderness Slut, which way is east?” Her head turns from side to side.

“Left,” Sam says without missing a beat. He gives my hand a light squeeze. The broken blood vessels like red spiders against the white of his eyeballs are gone. He had trouble sleeping for a couple of weeks after I got home from the hospital. He was afraid that the nutcases spilling into Savage would come looking for me. There are knocks at the front door and letters from those who believe Daniel and Caleb are innocent, urging me to come clean about the beast I saw make off with Jeanie. But we’ve managed. Dad works from home most days, and Shane checks in when he doesn’t. I sneak Sam into my room most nights to hold me under the covers. I think Dad and Sam’s mom are onto us but have decided to give us a pass.

Zoey flurries her pink polished fingertips at us. “Sam’s going to have to do the digging, because I’ve already chipped two nails.” Sam. Not the King of Loserdom. Only Sam. She turns for a beat, like she can sense what I’m thinking, and grins at the two of us.

She wades into a sea of electric-green ferns. In a forest of waning brightness, they illuminate the ground under a tightly woven canopy of hemlock. I grip the photo—the one of us kids on the monster hunt—a little tighter as their fronds brush against my thighs, the topsoil and our feet disappearing.

“You okay?” Sam’s head is level with mine. His owl eyes flick over me.

I rub my thumb along the curve of his jaw. “I was just thinking about how lucky I am to have you.” His lips brush my cheek. I think about it a lot lately. I used to measure love in terms of Daniel’s love for Jeanie. I thought Daniel’s limitless desire to figure out what had happened to his sister was the product of a love unbounded by this world or the next. Jeanie could have been dust and Daniel would have found her, made her whole again.

I was wrong. Daniel could have put Jeanie to rest years ago by coming clean, but he was too worried about the consequences for himself. Now I’ll measure love differently: in terms of Zoey and Sam. I’ll love them come hellfire, monsters, secrets, and Weirdowood—and they’ll love me the same.

We’re looking for the spot where Daniel shot Jeanie with the arrow; where I sat with her until she died. I want to bury this picture, the nearest thing I have to something that belonged to Jeanie, in the dirt that might still be coppery with her blood. It’s as close to a funeral for Jeanie as I can get. A tribute to Jeanie was Shane’s idea. He thought focusing on her being in a peaceful place would give me closure and help me stop imagining her face everywhere. Shane’s the only one I’ve shared that with. He’s as haunted as I am. When I told him I wanted to do it where Jeanie died, his cheeks puffed out like a blowfish until he whooshed with resignation.

We invited him along, but he has his hands full. The police are worried that with the amount of news coverage the crimes and the monster are getting, there will be copycats, sickos hoping to prove the monster’s existence by committing crimes, and pedophiles flocking to Savage in order to pin their dirty work on phantom beasts.

As we pass over the edge of the goblin ferns, I freeze. Sam’s side presses to mine. Zoey turns when she doesn’t hear our footsteps following, the wind rustling her short hair. With the light behind her head and her hair like that, she could pass for Caleb.

“Is this it?” Sam prods gently. Zoey is there on my other side in a flash, and before I confirm or deny, she has the shovel in her hands and she’s thrusting it into the parched soil. Eight unchipped nails be damned.