The Creeping

“Maybe it freaks you out because of how mysterious Jeanie’s disappearance was?” Sam continues. “Or maybe it’s because of the way people talked afterward? You remember that pastor in Rascan they used to interview on the news? He’d rant about the evil hocus-pocus at work in Savage. I remember my mom hustling me out of the grocery store because some out-of-towner in produce was shouting that we were all devil worshippers and brought this on ourselves. All that stuff would freak any kid out, especially since you were so close to it all.”


“I guess,” I answer flatly. The truth is I don’t have a clue. While other little girls giggled infectiously over ghost stories and got adrenaline-junkie highs over scream-fest slumber parties, I hated them. Super dumb, if you think about it. What’s real doesn’t eek me out, but what couldn’t possibly be makes me totally crazy. I know better than anyone that people do beastly things; my mom deserted us, remember. That I can stomach. But just whisper Grim Reaper to me before bed, and I won’t sleep a wink.

It hits me that I didn’t tap the iron heart once we’re a few yards deep in the cemetery. Whatever. It was just one of Zoey’s scary stories meant to screw with me. I tighten my grip on Sam’s hand. Strange how perfectly our hands fit together.

“Do you believe in the devil?” I ask quietly. I know, it can’t be good karma or cosmic juju or whatever to ask about the devil in a graveyard. But at the risk of cursing myself for life, there’s something about what Zoey said that coaxes that strange, nagging feeling from my gut.

Sam strokes my hand with his thumb. “Not in a religious sense. Actually”—he feigns a horrified expression—“I agree with Zoey. The devil is just a scary monster that people dream up. And who says there’s only one?”

“Devils, you mean?” I shiver, scanning the haggard gravestones surrounding us.

He gets that parenthesis mark between his brows. “Yeah, why wouldn’t there be? There’s more than one bad person in the world. Why wouldn’t there be more than one monster? Even more than one kind of monster?” I scrunch up my nose. “Sure there is.” He chuckles. “You’ve got those that aren’t bound by space and time, spirit types. And then you’ve got those that are more animal than ghost, like werewolves, yetis, and vampires. They may have longer life spans, but they can die. Let’s hope we’re dealing with the latter.” He’s smiling in jest, but there’s a wistful quality to his voice that makes me doubt he’s kidding.

The raindrops bead on the patchwork of emerald moss and soil. Neon-green lichen hangs straggly, like Silly String from the dark boughs of trees. The cemetery is unchanged and peaceful except for the hundreds of footsteps left between graves. All sizes crisscrossing, like a parade or a funeral procession marched through.

“The oldest graves are along the fence, facing the shore. It makes sense to start on the opposite side, since we need to check the most recent,” Sam reasons. I catch a flash of Zoey’s blond head in that direction, so light it glows white as a halo. When we reach her, she’s refastening the strap of her sandal, perched on a crumbling gravestone that reminds me of a giant molar.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to sit on those,” Sam says. Zoey makes a show of jumping down and curtsying. She falls in line next to me.

We work our way from the left to the right. It’s morbid work sorting through the dead. Well, the very dead, since the last person buried here died in 1946. The only noises are the sigh of the wind and the rhythm of raindrops.

“These names sound made up,” Zoey complains as she stands in the middle of a family plot surrounded by a waist-high wrought-iron fence. “Gottmo, Bbjorstrand, Faltskog—they sound like characters from those online wizard games guys play when they’re too fugly to get laid.” She bats her eyelashes innocently at Sam. “You know the type, Sam—everything they know about girls they learned from porn and music videos?”

Sam flicks his hair from his eyes, ignores the slight, and answers, “Many of the families that industrialized Minnesota were of Scandinavian decent.”

Zoey blinks at him. “Come again?”

“Like, descendants of the Vikings? That’s why there are so many Scandinavian names here.” His eyebrows arch up, and he looks from me to Zoey. “You know, that’s probably why there are so many blond and redheaded families in Savage,” he muses. I chew the inside of my cheek, nodding thoughtfully. I’ve never lived anywhere else, so I haven’t considered that Savage has more redheads, but it makes sense that someone who kills them would gravitate here if it’s true.

“There are some families in Savage that are descendants of the original settlers. Not my family, but hasn’t Mayor Berg’s been here for six or seven generations?” Sam adds. Zoey starts humming to herself to tune him out. She stops at a massive tombstone with a shield and an eagle engraved. “That’s the coat of arms for the US Navy,” he says. “There are graves of military families here, since the navy built ships before World War II just a few miles up the Minnesota River.”