Not only was her throat a red horror, but she was covered in dirt, as if she had come out of the ground. I could only think that her face was so perfect and white only because the sergeant had cleaned her up in an attempt to discern her identity. But it was more than the filthy condition of the body that was so disturbing. She looked…gnawed, as if consumed by wild beasts. She had no fingers on one hand, and a chunk of her midriff was entirely gone. Her legs had been worked upon as if they were turkey drumsticks.
I managed to get myself up. And still I never let loose the scream that seemed to echo in my mind, terrified and shrill.
I lived in a mortuary. I had seen dead bodies before.
But never—never—anything like this.
I heard the door opening, and ran to hide in the bushes by the side of the house, my heart thundering. I was terrified.
I couldn’t help feeling that I was in danger of ending up like that poor girl.
My father was still complaining to the sergeant for bringing the body to him.
“You can make her look beautiful. She deserves a proper funeral, and her family deserves to be able to mourn her.”
“Sergeant Lee, you’re mad! Why did you bring her here? Why didn’t you leave her where you found her?” my father protested. “Better she had stayed in the dirt, stayed missing! What if someone insists on digging her up again? What if they discover our deception?”
“I chose not to leave her because—someone else would have discovered her. Stop worrying. No one will question her death. Doctor Howard, the old souse, has already signed a death certificate. She was struck by a carriage and left by the road. Don’t you understand me? Her death must be seen as a tragic accident. The work of a coward who left a girl dead in the streets, rather than admit he had struck her. If the truth were to come out, the city would erupt. There would be slaughter of an entirely different kind if the populace were to discover that there is a killer in our midst—and we have not the slightest idea of who he is or what sickness drives him to his atrocities. You will do this, and you will do it right, or I will see to it that you are run out of this town. Get that witch of a housekeeper of yours to mix up a few potions so that she looks good. Start tonight. I must go and inform this poor girl’s family.”
My father was angry; furious. But Sergeant Lee was a powerful man. Watching them together, I felt ill. It was as if they knew things about each other that created a strange bond between them. They weren’t friends, but there was a connection binding them. I waited in silence as they picked up the body, still wrapped in the tarp, and carried it to the back door. Still I didn’t move. I didn’t dare.
I stayed in the bushes.
I stayed there for a very long time.
At last, having no true concept of how much time had gone by, I slipped back into the house, only to find that she was there. Martha Tyler.
Martha always wore a bandana wrapped around her head as if it were a crown and she some kind of queen. One drop of African blood made a man or woman a slave, and Martha could have been a slave. But she wasn’t, even though she came to us from the South and made no complaint when we brought her back there. I think she had been a slave, though, that she killed her master and escaped. But perhaps I only think that because I hate her. The girls in town who giggle and come to her for love potions don’t know her the way I know her. They don’t see her when she sits in front of a mirror, looking at her reflection. They don’t hear her voice when she speaks to me, disdaining me.
They have never seen anything like the malicious evil in her eyes when I entered the house that night.
“Ah, little girl, little girl. Poor little ugly girl.” She came to me and took me by the ear, hurting me, but when I would have cried out, she brought a finger to her lips. “Shh,” she warned me, but she didn’t let go. “Where have you been, little girl? You should not be nosy. Such bad things can happen to nosy little girls. There are panthers out there. And bears and alligators and snakes. Predators that own the night. They love to feed upon little girls, for no meat is so sweet as girl-flesh.”
“Let me go,” I pleaded, but I didn’t cry out for my father. I knew he wouldn’t have helped me. He had never loved me, because I wasn’t a beautiful child.
He would have helped her feed me to the creatures of the night, the snakes and alligators and panthers.
She released me, laughing. “You had better forget all that you’ve seen and heard, or else…” She made a hissing sound through her teeth and slashed a line across her throat with her finger. “Nosy little girls go to feed the creatures in the woods, and in the end, they are consumed by the worms.”
I raced past her, terrified.
I prayed for the day that she and my father might die. I knew I would go to hell for such a cruel thought, but I could not help it.
For I would prefer hell to this evil house, and the company of my father and Martha Tyler.
“That poor girl,” Sarah found herself saying aloud. She quickly turned the page, but it was blank. Mystified, she kept looking through the journal.