I open my eyes, and it’s still there. A rust-colored streak on the wall next to the window. One that definitely wasn’t there Friday night.
A blood smear.
I step back, hand covering my mouth, and a loose board below my feet collapses. I go down, hard. The hay around me is dotted with dried blood. A strangled yelp of fear slips out of me. I dig my heels in and push myself away. Scramble until I’m standing, and then I’m running to the door.
Outside I tear a glove off one hand with my teeth and root around until I find the card in my jacket pocket. Deputy Eileen Knepper, Broken Falls Sheriff’s Department.
The line rings and rings. I look at my phone and consider hitting end call. I shouldn’t be here.
“BFSD, Knepper.” A gummy sound fills the line. I picture her eating breakfast, something like oatmeal. “Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to?”
“This is Kacey Young. Bailey’s friend—”
“Of course! We spoke yesterday. Everything all right?”
“Um, I don’t think so.” I press a hand to my chest. Breathe. “I’m at Sparrow Hill. I went inside the barn, and there’s blood in there.”
The line falls silent. I feel that word crackle between us. Blood.
Knepper’s voice sobers. “How much blood?”
The sound of a twig snapping. I whirl around. Nothing there.
“Kacey, you there?”
“Yeah. Um, there’s a…smear of blood. It’s dry.”
The line falls silent. I hear clacking, at a keyboard, before Knepper speaks again. “I’m gonna need you to just simmer while I send someone over, okay? Can you head back down the hill for me? Wait by the road?”
Something glints at my feet, catching my eye, and I bend down for a closer look. The pendulum. Bailey must have dropped it on our way out the other night. I pick it up and put it in my jacket pocket.
“Yeah,” I tell Ellie Knepper. “I can do that.”
One hand on the pendulum in my pocket, I go back into the barn, pick up the abandoned tea lights from our séance, and take them outside. I bury them in a drift of snow under the closest tree.
—
I’m at the bottom of Sparrow Hill. The sun is at a forty-five-degree angle to my face. A flock of geese fly overhead, their honks volleying back and forth. I’ve been standing here for a while. I thought about going home and waiting for the police there, but Ellie Knepper said not to move.
My phone says it’s almost seven. No messages from Ashley or my dad. I picture Ashley over the counter at Milk & Sugar, licking the pad of her thumb and counting out change to start the register off. She didn’t even notice I was gone when she left for work. She must have thought I was still sleeping after a night of worrying about Bailey and didn’t want to disturb me.
The crunch of tires on snow. A sheriff’s cruiser bumps along, hugging the shoulder even though Sparrow Hill is a one-lane road. As it gets closer I can make out a walrus of a man with a white-blond mustache behind the wheel.
He cuts the engine. Pours himself out of the car and makes his way toward me.
“Sheriff Bill Moser.” He sticks out an enormous gloved paw.
The sheriff. I called the sheriff away from the search for Bailey.
“Kacey Young.” I shake Moser’s hand.
Bill Moser frowns. “I thought Ellie said Ashley Markham’s daughter called.”
“I’m her stepdaughter. Different last names…”
Moser turns pink. “Well, let’s see what we got here.”
Moser starts the trek up the hill and I follow, keeping a polite pace alongside him.
“So,” he huffs. “How old are ya?”
“Seventeen.”
“Ah, so you’re a junior.”
“Senior.”
Moser stops to take a breath. “I got a great-niece your age, goes to BFH. You know Bridget Gibson?”
I nearly trip over my feet. Suddenly it’s clear why Ellie Knepper seemed hell-bent on not discussing Cliff Grosso. He’s the sheriff’s great-niece’s boyfriend.
“I know Bridget,” I say. “She’s in my grade.”
“So. Whatcha doin’ all the way out here, alone? Considering what’s going on.”
A warning flares in my brain, telling me not to say anything about Chloe Strauss and the bloody woman. “Morning walk. I live down the road.”
Beside me, Moser wheezes. “Ya walked all the way up to the barn?”
“I thought I heard something. Like an animal. So I came up to look inside.”
I can’t tell if the sheriff doesn’t buy my story or if he’s asking all these questions for the sake of asking. He keeps his eyes on the ground. People here don’t like unpleasantness. They look their deer in the eye and apologize before shooting.
It’s likely why Moser hasn’t said anything about what happened up here all those years ago.
“The blood,” I say. “It’s like, smeared on the wall. And there’s some on the ground”
“Well, we’ll check it out.”
I hang back when we get to the top of the hill, watch as Moser sputters over to the barn. He leans against the entrance, catching his breath. “You know, there’s a lot of animals up here,” he says. “The blood could’ve come from one of them. You said you heard an animal, huh?”
The blood drains from my head. Lying was bad, but I’m already in it.
Moser collects himself. Enters the barn. His voice echoes off the walls. “Yup, lots of hunting animals up here. Foxes, stoats, ermines, coyotes. Even saw a bobcat once.” A beat of silence. And then: “Oh jeez. That’s not good.”
—
I’m sitting in the front of Moser’s cruiser. No need to freeze half to death, he said. Just promise not to drive off on me. A nervous chuckle. I’ve been sitting here for over an hour. Lauren and Andrew should be awake by now; if they’ve noticed I’m not in my room, they probably think I’m at the café working. I gave one of the deputies Ashley’s cell phone number, but he must not have called her yet.
The cruiser’s vents blast hot air in my face. I press a hand to the cool window. My socks are damp. The deputy Moser called for backup took my boots and wandered off, sealing them in an evidence bag. To eliminate tread marks, he’d explained. I’ll get them back eventually, he said.
I peel off my socks and slip my feet into the paper booties the deputy gave me. Drape the socks over the dash, hoping the heat from the vent will dry them.
Tread marks. We walked all over Sparrow Hill Friday night. The snow’s covered our footsteps outside, but inside the barn—the tread marks from my boots won’t match my story that I only stepped inside the barn today. If they find the other sets of footprints, they’ll know I’ve been to the barn before. With three other people.
But there should be a fourth set, too. From whoever left the blood there. The thought calms my nerves, although I can’t put my finger on the reason why.
Two more cars—one cruiser marked WISCONSIN STATE POLICE K-9 UNIT, one black with tinted windows—come down Sparrow Road. The drivers each do a three-point turn to park on the same side as Moser’s cruiser.
A uniformed man in a wide-brimmed hat steps out of the state police cruiser, accompanied by a woman who leads a German shepherd on a leash. When they pass by the cruiser, I catch a glimpse of the words on the dog’s orange vest: SEARCH AND RESCUE.