The Creeping

“It’s okay. Daniel will call back,” Sam says.

My eyes linger on the five faces in the photo. All of us look feral, glowing from the thrill of whatever hunt we were on—that is, everyone but Jeanie. Her eyes are angled downward at this rust-eaten coffee tin tied with string around her neck. The tin cylinder hangs just above her waist. Her mouth is pressed into a thin line. “What is that around her neck?” I ask, tilting the photo for Sam.

His jaw works back and forth as he thinks. “It looks like a homemade drum, like we were soldiers and she was the drummer of war,” he says. “I remember making one out of a milk carton.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I say. I have trouble looking away from its shape, how she’s wearing it as a necklace, and her downcast eyes. I know I’ve seen it before, more than once, more than just that afternoon. The coffee tin’s lid is snapped on, and I can imagine her tiny hands beating it as a percussion instrument. There’s a quality to her expression, though—bleakness and dread—that makes me doubt it’s a toy. It makes me think that Jeanie was the only one who understood that whatever game we were playing at wasn’t a game at all. She was smarter than the rest of us.

“What do you think we were looking for?” I ask, moving on to my likeness. I don’t know what it is. I look different from all the other pictures I’ve seen of myself as a kid. I look wild. And happy. Maybe that’s what I looked like before Jeanie was taken?

“I don’t know. There might not have been anything. I remember seeing a couple of homeless men walking in the woods near the train tracks.”

“The police searched the woods for drifters who might have taken Jeanie. Hundreds of volunteers walked the woods for weeks afterward looking for any sign,” I say. “But they never found anything.”

“The woods run into Blackdog State Park. It would be easy for someone to stay hidden up there for a long time. Hundreds of square miles of nothingness and only a couple of rangers who patrol,” Sam says thoughtfully. He focuses on my frown and adds quickly, “I’m sure that’s not what happened, though. Why do you think you said that stuff to the police?”

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “At first I was sure I didn’t mean it. There obviously weren’t really monsters in the woods. I just figured that I was confused or that I was talking figuratively. Like I meant that the person who took Jeanie was a monster. I guess that’s dumb. Six-year-olds don’t think that way.” I wrap my arms around myself, the house suddenly cold. “Kids see monsters everywhere.” I echo Shane’s words.

“Maybe,” Sam says. “But maybe there was actually something there to see.” My eyebrows pinch together. He holds his palms up. “Remember that I’m a science nerd, and so far the evidence suggests that the perpetrator doesn’t have a normal human lifespan.”

I shiver, fidgeting in my now stiff and filthy jean shorts. “I think you’re confusing science with science fiction,” I murmur. “And all signs point to this being more than one person.” I emphasize the word, but I can’t shake a gnawing inside me. Sort of like a homework assignment you forget to complete before you go to bed at night, and you get that maggot of suspicion squirming inside your head that your work isn’t totally done.

Sam slides the photo back into the envelope. I’m about to tell him that something isn’t stacking up when the doorbell rings.

I hop up and cross my fingers that it’s Caleb back from the cove. He’s had a couple of hours to think about it, and he’s realized we have a responsibility to help Mr. Talcott and Daniel, even if it puts us in danger. He’s realized that I’m already in danger. Two steps through the foyer and I twist the bolt and yank it open.

No one’s there. “Hello?” I call. There’s only the pouring rain and the bruised sky of pre-dusk. I take a step onto the porch, and my toe nudges something. It’s a wicker basket full of anemic-looking strawberries the color of dead flesh; it’s as though the life’s been sucked out of them. I stoop for a closer look. It has. White maggots writhe from holes in the berries.

Sam charges out the front door, over the soggy lawn and down the sidewalk. I brace myself in the doorway. My hands shake. I kick my bare foot into the basket, sending the berries and maggots scattering down the porch steps and into the rain.

After five minutes of scouring the block, Sam jogs back. “I didn’t see anyone anywhere,” he pants. He hops over the mess. “Let’s get inside and call the police.”