The Creeping

“What is it?” Sam asks, sounding stronger already.

The shwet shwet of her knife slicing at the stick doesn’t stop. “Don’t know exactly. I don’t put creed in thinkin’ it’s a force causin’ accidents. Best I can describe it is this: It’s an appetite, a creature bent on feedin’. It craves a certain kind of li’l girl, and if it can’t get its hooks into what it wants, anyone in its path will do.”

My fingernails are blue from cold and gouging into the back of the wooden chair hard enough to leave claw marks. I chew the inside of my cheek, hoping to jolt myself awake from the nightmare I’m obviously trapped in.

“But what is it?” Sam prods. “Where did it come from? Is it an animal? A person?”

She shrugs, cool amusement playing on her face. “It might have started out as one or the other. But once it peeled the flesh from a babe’s arm jus’ to hear her blubber, it stopped bein’ either.”

“Like the devil,” I murmur.

Griever appraises me, running her tongue over her gray gums. “There’s no devil. Doesn’t need to be, with what actually lurks high in those hills. Trust me, you don’t wanna be after rememberin’ it. When I was a li’l thing, folks in Savage wanted it kept secret. Maybe people are still after keepin’ it quiet?”

“But why keep it a secret?” I sputter. “If parents knew, they wouldn’t let their kids in the woods. The disappearances would stop.”

Griever waggles a splintered yellow fingernail at me. “You see, when folks knew ’bout it when I was a girl, there were those who preyed on their fear. Did things to li’l girls and blamed it on the Creepin’, knowin’ full well they’d get away with it. Sure, the critter sank its latch hooks into some of ’em, but men and women took others. Folks thought it was better to keep quiet ’bout the monster they knew than to unleash all they didn’t.”

“That’s why the graves in the cemetary were tampered with,” Sam says. “Someone didn’t want future generations seeing all those graves of little children and investigating what happened, finding out about the creature if it had been forgotten. Betty Balco and the other girls went missing, and they never found who did it. And you’re saying this—this thing took some of them, but people took others because they thought they could hide behind the legend? And they were right. When this happened eighty years ago, they never made any arrests.”

“But that’s not happening now,” I say. “If people were trying to cover it up, they wouldn’t have let Jeanie’s case go unsolved for eleven years, right? They would have found a viable suspect. Put the case to rest so people didn’t ask questions.”

“Maybe they thought it would go away?” Sam says. “One little girl’s an anomaly after so many years. But Jane Doe showed up dead and they figured it’s happening again and they hustled all the charges on Kent Talcott. Rather than letting people know there’s something in the woods, they’re sending an innocent man to prison.”

“But how does anyone know about it?” I ask Griever.

She tilts her head back, regarding me. “Same way folks know ’bout anythin’. Someone told ’em. Stories passed down through generations. Even though a lot of the old families have died out or moved on, you got some who’ve lived here for years. I bet they know ’bout the Creepin’. How couldn’t they know a monster’s afoot with all those dead li’l girls turnin’ up?”

Griever sets her jaw so her jowls twitch in the firelight. I want desperately to believe she’s mostly crazy, brain turned to mush with age, spinning stories to justify a pathological violence against animals. Yet I don’t.

I move out from behind Sam. “This thing is what took Jeanie? You helped her once, though, didn’t you? You found her when she was lost in the woods a month before she disappeared.” I recall the good witch that Jeanie said helped her.

Griever licks her lips. “I seen you kids playin’ at huntin’ lots of times. I told you and your li’l redheaded friend to be careful what ya looked for, ya jus’ might find it. Yous were stubborn li’l brats who didn’t listen.” And there it is. A mystery solved. Griever warned Jeanie and me, and we didn’t listen.

“You.” I struggle to keep my bearing. “?‘If you hunt for monsters, you’ll find them.’ You told us that. Why didn’t you tell the cops?”

“Police were lookin’ for someone to blame. Someone to hold responsible for the missing li’l girl. I wasn’t gonna admit to talkin’ to yous out here alone.”

I run it through my mind until it’s smooth and shiny. All these months since I read the case file I’ve been parroting what Griever said to shoo us from the woods. To keep us safe and alive, but we didn’t listen, and Jeanie died for it.