The Creeping

I hand him the notes, and his eyes skim rapidly back and forth. “See.” I point to the first page. “We know that none of the missing girls from the thirties are in the online archives yet, but in December of 1938 there was an article about ten dogs going missing. That’s only months after Betty Balco disappeared and a few years after the others in the articles you found.” I flip to the second page. “In 1956 the town’s first cannery burned down, trapping and killing three men who worked there. They burned alive. Four people reported missing dogs in the month after.” I thumb through the pages and put another on top of the stack for Sam to read. “The Savage Bee burned down in 1972. The paper’s secretary was killed in the fire. Two weeks later, three families reported their dogs and cats missing.”


I try to stay calm, but my palms break into a cold sweat. “In the summer of 1960 a houseboat sank in Blackdog Lake, killing the family who was vacationing on it; in 1980 two hikers were mauled by a bear; in 1984 a school bus collided with a delivery van, killing a teacher and two students; and eleven years ago, Jeanie Talcott disappeared while playing in her front yard.” I take a second to catch my breath after the grim list. “Since the newspaper began reporting in 1910, there have been twenty-one disasters or accidents that have happened in Savage. Those are just what showed up in the online archives and don’t include the disappearances we know about in the thirties. Do you know what seventeen out of twenty-one of them have in common?”

Sam drops the stack of papers on the coffee table and tucks a frenzied wisp of hair behind my ear. His mouth sets into a gloomy line. “There’s a bunch of animal disappearances afterward,” he supplies.

“Right,” I say, waving my finger in the air. “As few as one and as many as ten have been reported missing in the weeks after these bad things. I could only find the one article from 1938 talking about a rash of lost dogs, and people just figured there was a large animal hunting in the woods.”

“But you don’t think so?” Sam asks.

“No,” I say fiercely. “Those animals had the same end as the cat from the cemetery today. I wish it weren’t true, but I know it. Sacrificed on a makeshift altar by some sicko who thinks they’re making an offering to stop the horrible things from happening.”

“Making a sacrifice to who, though?” Sam motions skyward. “To the gods? This isn’t ancient Greece. Accidents happen. It’s horrible that all those people died, but fires burn down buildings, people die in accidents. Nothing’s causing those things to happen but terrible luck.”

“I know that and you know that, but whoever is doing this thinks they’re not accidents. I get that it’s padded-room-worthy, but whoever these people are, they think someone or something is causing all of it.”

Sam chews the inside of his cheek. “So you’re saying that you don’t think whoever killed Jane Doe, Jeanie, and her mom killed the tabby cat?”

I shake my head hard. “I don’t. I think that we’re looking for multiple psychos. Whoever is killing the little girls and whoever is killing the animals are different groups. More than one monster.” I lower my voice. “More than one devil.”

“And you think it’s a clandestine group? Like some order of men and women trying to protect Savage from evil happening by sacrificing animals over generations?” I jerk my head yes. “How could something like that stay secret?”

“I have no idea, but it has.” I run my hands from the roots of my hair to the ends. The hitch of my heart picks up. “And maybe it was going on way before the newspaper started reporting in 1910? Maybe the finger bone fits in somehow?” My words fall faster. “There have to be more records of Savage, ones that go back further in history, even before the town was founded in 1902.” Sam’s face is neutral, reflecting none of the frenzy I feel. “Before 1902 there were settlers here.”

He shrugs. “A small group of fur traders came in the 1600s. Then Scandinavian settlers after that.” His feet shuffle restlessly. His brows pinch together as he opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. “Stella, whatever is going on, it’s bigger than Jeanie. I know there are bad people in the world, but this”—his eyes search the room for the right word—“this is more. It’s unnatural.” His hands flop at his sides, and he huffs with the admission.

I get what Sam is saying; why the muscle in his jaw is clenching; why his shoulders round forward; why the web of blue veins on his neck is showing through pale skin. There’s a coldness in my bones telling me there’s something else to all of this too. Like a thin layer of dust coating a fresh body. Something that twists the mind. Defies sense. But unlike Sam, I have a name for it: fear. And unlike Sam, I believe there are people out there—people so bad their organs are as shriveled and rotten as the strawberries left on my front porch—who could have killed all those little girls. I don’t need to invent monsters.

I rub the goose bumps from my arms. “All I know for sure is that I have to keep looking. If that means digging up Mrs. Griever’s yard to find tiny graves of the sacrificed, so be it. There’s nothing I won’t do,” I say recklessly.