The Creeping

Shane sits back in his chair and eyes his wristwatch. “Set aside the fact that you lied to me—to the police—about knowing Daniel was back in town. There’s nothing I can do to stop this. Kent Talcott confessed, and he’s going before a judge in fifteen minutes.”


“N-no,” I stammer. “Your officers are wrong. He wouldn’t have confessed to something he didn’t do.”

He tilts forward, sticking his face right in mine. “I’m the one who took his confession.” He thumps his fist to his chest. “Me. Late last night. He pled guilty to all three charges. Jeanie, Bev Talcott, and Jane Doe. He says she was a runaway in the park. We still haven’t identified her. But he knew about the finger bone. There are numerous Indian burial grounds in Blackdog. It’s something he came across; nothing more than a little misdirection to throw us off his trail.”

I whip my head back and forth. “Don’t you get it? I told Daniel about the finger bone. Daniel knows. He must have told his dad. Daniel knows about her scalp, too. He knows everything.”

“Stella, there isn’t even going to be a trial by jury, only a sentence agreed to by his defense attorney, the prosecution, and the judge. Daniel came to the station the night before last. He wanted us to know he’s been in town and investigating the murders himself. He came back to the station with his dad when Kent turned himself in. Verified that his dad doesn’t have an alibi for the window of time our medical examiners say Jane Doe and Bev Talcott were murdered. Do you hear me? Jeanie’s father murdered her.”

I close my fingers around the chair legs to brace myself. Here Shane is, with a perfectly gruesome but reasonable explanation, the story of a bad man who preys on children, whose own son believes he’s guilty. It’s the kind of explanation I need so that I don’t have to believe in what can’t possibly exist. I want to pounce on it, swallow it to ease the itch of dread, shove it down Sam’s throat so we can both be free from what lurks in the woods. But I can’t. My blood sings that it’s a lie.

My gaze is level with Shane’s. “What about hunting monsters? What about all the missing little girls? Don’t you see? It couldn’t be one man.” My chin set, I’m aware of the flurry of fear in the back of my head. “You said that kids see monsters everywhere.” I stare steely-eyed at him. “What if there was something to see? What if I saw it?”

His eyes half-lidded with exhaustion, Shane settles back. He rubs the heels of his hands over his eyelids. “I’m sure whatever you saw that day was unspeakable. A sick man hurting his child. Bad enough for your mind to hide the memory away where it couldn’t hurt you. But that’s all it was.” His whole face crinkles with the pain of saying it. “Kid, there’s no magic, no monsters, no mystery, no demons, except for Mr. Talcott’s.” Pity softens his eyes, and his words are delicately spoken. I can feel myself becoming someone else—a victim—sitting across from him. Tim Shane has never treated me like I’m glass already veiny with fractures. I want to crawl out of my skin to escape it now. I want to shout and riot until I’ve broken everything in the room so he can see how strong I am.

“Have I ever told you about my grandmother?” he says.

My mouth purses, and I shake my head once.

“My grandma, my dad’s mother, used to scare us kids to bed with stories when she visited us in Florida. She grew up here, in these woods.” He’s quiet for a full minute, eyes focused on the space behind me, head tilted like he’s watching phantoms play on the wall. Then he sighs. “How much do you know about Minnesota’s history?”

“We studied state history freshman year,” I say, letting my own thoughts stray from this frustrating beige room. I can still feel the warmth of Sam’s knees grazing my lower back as he sat behind me in class. I fake smiled at him every time he spoke to me in Mr. Flint’s fifth period, but it made something quiver deep in me when his jeans touched the inch of bare skin between my waistband and shirt’s hem.

“Okay, so you know that in the seventeenth century fur traders from France came to this territory for a time, and then a couple hundred years later there was an influx of Scandinavian pioneers who settled here.” He pauses, and I nod. “But hundreds of years before, a group of Norse explorers sailed across the Atlantic, navigated the rivers, and settled in this spot. The Norse are descendants of the Vikings.” I search my mind for the story. Something about it tugs at threads here and there, but they fray when I try to follow.

“It started with one of their children waking up with the tip of a finger nibbled off to its knuckle. At first the Norse were certain that a starving rat attacked him. But a few days go by and another wakes screaming, a few of his toes gnawed off.”