The Creeping

Daniel whips his head back and forth. I cut him off before he can argue. “Is this where you came after the bonfire?”


“That’s great.” He scrubs his hands over his sneering face. “Rub it in that if I’d gone home to that rat-infested trailer, my mom might still be alive. I could have stopped whoever hurt her.” He groans, and his arms drop limp and heavy at his sides. “I didn’t want to be with them, okay? Not after you found that kid . . . not after I saw how much she looked like Jeanie. I needed to be in our old house.”

If he were someone less volatile, I’d throw my arms around him. Daniel didn’t go home to his parents’ after the bonfire because he wanted to be where Jeanie had been alive. If Daniel had driven across town to the trailer instead, would he have arrived before his mom went for a walk? He might have gone with her, and Mrs. Talcott would be alive.

“What’s your plan?” I ask. “You just going to camp out in your old abandoned house while your dad goes to jail for crimes he didn’t commit?” I sweep my arms, indicating his outfit. “Or a neighbor calls the cops on you for looking like a homeless squatter?”

A muscle ticks in his jaw as he mulls over his answer. There’s something he’s holding back, unsure about trusting us with.

“Let us help,” I plead.

Finally, he groans in surrender. “I was about to go talk to someone who was a witness the day Jeanie was taken.”

I shake my head. “I was the only witness. Me.” I touch my chest for extra measure just so there’s zero confusion. “The case file says so.”

He clears his throat and spits a fat wad on the ground between his dusty Vans. “Yeah, ’cause cops never lie.” If it’s possible, his expression becomes even surlier. “A neighbor was home, and those pigs interviewed her but decided she wasn’t credible. They left her statement out of their reports.”

I prop my hands on my hips. “Shane and Berry wouldn’t do anything dishonest. You don’t know them. Berry died a few weeks ago because he was such a stress-ball. And Shane . . . he would never.”

Daniel laughs an acidic-sounding laugh. “You think you’re the only one Detectives Douchebag and Dickless check on? I know all about them. And I know that they interviewed Mrs. Griever that day. If you two junior detectives actually want to help, let’s go.” Daniel’s expression isn’t exactly welcoming as he stomps across the marshy front yard, but what else can we do other than follow? What other option do I have? We trail after him down the drive bordered by strawberry plants. Wait. Strawberry plants?

At first glance they appear to be thorned. I angle closer. Their glossy leaves and green stalks that curl and bow almost disguise a waist-high mass of bramble. The bramble’s half-inch-long barbs have the look of talons or claws. The two vines, one laden with red fruit shinier than what we get from the grocery store and the other with the look of barbed wire, have intertwined as one snarl.

“I thought they tore these up,” I say to anyone with answers. I glare suspiciously at the healthy torrent of vines.

“Dad tried,” Daniel says. “He hacked them down every year since Jeanie, but they grew back stronger. I guess their roots were too deep, and they just resprouted each summer. Then the bramble started growing through them, taking over. It drove him nuts. He’d shred his arms on their thorns trying to get the whole mass out.” He kicks a bulbous berry from the trail. “None of the neighbors would touch the fruit, because they’re convinced it’s poisonous. Without Dad here, no one’s slashing them down anymore.”

The confusion of vines seem darker and greener than the muted shrubbery along the drive. I can’t tell if the bramble’s strangling the strawberries, or boosting them up as a lattice would and protecting them from greedy hands with their thorns. I’m seized by an awful fantasy that the bramble’s protecting the fruit from something worse. I shudder and duck around Sam so he’s between me and the plants. The scuff of my flats on the trail grows quieter. I have the sense that we’re sneaking up on what doesn’t want to be found.

“You okay?” Sam whispers, nudging my arm with his elbow.

I nod and then shake my head on second thought. “This place doesn’t feel right, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” he mutters. The lane narrows the farther we get from the abandoned house. The trees lining either side grow diagonally over us, their branches tangled and woven together in a tie-dye of browns and greens. We pass what I thought was the last house on the drive, a large two-story Victorian wearing a wraparound porch like a hula hoop, but Daniel marches on. The lane is no more than a path now, barely wide enough for Sam and me to walk alongside each other, let alone for a car to make it through.