The Creeping

“Not here, Stella,” Shane warns.

I look from Shane to Daniel, the earth abruptly tilting under my feet. Shane protecting Daniel from me rather than me from Daniel. “I said, what is Daniel doing here?” I raise my voice.

Shane frowns down at me. “That’s official police business.”

I toss my hair over my shoulders and glare at him until his resolve falters. He lets out a puff of air. “Daniel’s giving us a statement. As you can see, his father’s been taken into custody, and Daniel’s corroborated our evidence.”

Shane’s words are like the shriek and hiss of a machine seizing right before it breaks down. I shake my head. “Corroborate? Daniel knows his dad didn’t do anything. Daniel went to the police station to tell you guys that, right? To tell you what’s really going on.”

Shane crosses his arms in a lousy attempt to look official. “The details of his testimony are confidential.”

I move to go around Shane, but he catches my arm. “Daniel,” I shout, struggling against his grasp. Through gritted teeth Shane pleads under his breath for me not to make a scene. Finally, Daniel looks up, features sharp, clean-shaven chin set. “Sam found a picture of all of us in the woods before Jeanie went missing,” I call. “We were out there looking for something.” He keeps his eyes on me. His irises are usually the same tie-dye of green and brown as mine, but today they’re darker. He tilts his head. For a brief, half-confused moment I think he’s glaring at me. But I’m wrong, because why would he be angry with me? “Griever was right. Your dad has nothing to do with this. There’s something bigger going on.”

Daniel takes a step forward. “The only thing going on is that my dad killed my mom and sister,” he says, his voice dead, features slack. But the Daniel I know is a rabid animal: boundlessly suspicious, quicker to bite than bark, and definitely too feral for the lavender shirt he’s wearing and the close shave.

I’m hot-faced as more and more sets of eyes focus on me. “Don’t you remember what we were doing in the woods?” I try.

The lawyer with the pillowy middle rests his hand at Daniel’s elbow and begins to usher him away, giving me a sideways look of disapproval. “I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Daniel says, hushed.

Desperate, I yell at his back, “We were hunting monsters. You told Jeanie it could leave the woods, remember?” The gentle hum of conversation in the hall goes quiet. I lunge forward to go after Daniel, but Shane holds me in place.

“Not here,” Shane whispers harshly in my ear. I reluctantly look away from Daniel’s retreating figure. “We need to speak in private.”

Shane’s hand is replaced by Zoey’s arm looped in mine. “Stella isn’t giving her statement until her father, her lawyer, is here,” she says icily.

Shane’s face deepens a few shades, and he opens his mouth—probably to have Zoey arrested. I cut him off. “She’s right.” I try hard not to flinch at the hurt obvious in his eyes.

He takes a long breath and says, “You’re a minor, so I can’t question you without your dad’s permission anyway. But we can speak, just me and you, off the record. Anything you say will stay between us.”

Zoey shakes her head adamantly, but I nod. After five minutes of her protesting, she finally relents and slouches against the wall, dropping to the ground, letting loose a string of curse words that make the nearby police blush.

I follow Shane down a beige corridor, carpets and walls the same drab color, fluorescent lights sighing like they’re alive, until we find an empty office.

“Start talking,” he orders after I sit. And I do. I tell him everything—minus my plan to trespass tonight on Old Lady Griever’s land—and he listens.

When I’m finished, I fold my hands neatly in my lap and try to look as sane and believable as possible.

He leans forward, elbows resting on knees, blue bags bulging under his eyes. “I understand why you think there’s something else going on here. What you’ve recounted for me are a lot of strange occurrences, and I agree that it seems too much to be coincidence. But Stella, this is me. I know you. If you told this story to any of the department’s other detectives, they’d think you were on drugs or a kid looking for attention. They’ll call the memories hallucinations from stress or dismiss them as the products of an active imagination.”

“What about Daniel? Whatever he said, he’s confused. It’s this town. Everyone convinced that his dad did it. It got to him. He’s been helping us figure out what happened. He’s been searching for Jeanie’s body. I know he’ll remember hunting in the woods. If you would just talk to him again.”