“What about his family?” She leans in hard with a child-like curiosity etched in her face as if this were a bedtime story I’m weaving in her honor. “I bet one of them found out and they’re just raving mad! I bet they took her to the reservation or something. They don’t think the rest of us are good enough to raise their kind.”
“No.” I’m quick to refute her runaway thoughts. “He had no family. Both of Len’s parents were dead. He never made mention of any siblings. I doubt anyone outside that circle would care enough to do this.” My mind tries to wrestle down the possibilities, but a part of me knows that delving into any of Heather’s theories is only an exercise in madness.
She leans in further, closing the distance between us with a ferocity. Her hard gaze penetrates me, unyielding and unwelcome.
“People are insane.” Her fingernails graze over the top of my hand and I retract it. “People want what they believe is theirs, and sometimes there’s not a person on the planet who has the power to stop them.” Her voice is hypnotically slow, those gray eyes of hers gloss over as if she were stoned.
“Are you threatening me?” I’m so damn tired of being in the passenger’s seat. If Heather Evans thinks I have an ounce left in me to put up with her brand of psychotic bullshit, she has another thing coming. As far as I know, I am in a waking nightmare that for the life of me I can’t rouse myself from, and last time I checked it’s not a homicide to slaughter someone within your dreams. That is exactly what I used to fantasize about back in high school. Some girls dreamed of their wedding day, a white picket fence, two point five children, and I dreamed of hacking Heather to bits with the rusty butcher knife my father kept in the shed. My sister beat me to it—wrong person, though.
“Take it how you want to, Ally.” Her eyes spear their deadness into mine. “I’m not leaving until we find your little girl. And the only way we’re going to find her is if you tell the truth—just like you had me tell the truth that day. Remember?” Her voice pitches, candy coated with insanity.
“Yes.” I swallow hard. “I remember.”
* * *
By Friday, I’m worn thin with text messages from my least favorite nuisance. I’ve relegated Heather to a hotel room and happily confined she’s been ever since. For now, the electronic communication and just breathing the same air, as she puts it, is enough to satisfy her. She claims to understand that my husband and I need some time to ourselves. But I know her too well. I have a ticking time bomb sitting at the edge of town just waiting to blow up in my face.
McCafferty shows up again, and like some over animated character in a silent movie, she asks us to follow her down to the woods at the end of the street as a coven of reporters lurk in the distance. It’s the first icy day we’ve had here and the fog rolls out in billows down the street like batting unfurling off the bolt. Tomorrow night is Halloween, a treasured and well-loved holiday to Reagan, and it sickens me that she’s not here to bask in the glory. It sickens me she’s not here to begin with.
“What are we doing?” I pant, trying to keep up with her brisk pace.
James picks up my hand and gives a warm squeeze. “Is there new evidence?”
New evidence is an oxymoron at the moment, considering there hasn’t been any evidence at all.
“Just something I thought the two of you might be interested in.”
We set foot into the woods as our feet crunch over the brittle pine needles that have shed to create a mattress over the soil.
“Before this land was a development, there used to be farmhouses here.” She gives a hard sniff as if pausing to take in the fresh pine scent. It smells like rot and death to me, and I pray to God that has nothing to do with Reagan.
James scoffs. “If you say the words Indian burial ground—”
My stomach lurches when he says the words Indian burial ground—more to the point, Indian.
“Not that.” She walks deeper into the woods before turning to face us. “There was once a house here.”
A chill runs up my spine because already I don’t like where this is going.
“Turn of the twentieth century these were all dairy farms.” She frowns at the development sitting behind us, a testament to modern day architecture, greedy contractors, and overbuilding. “But the main house of the Wilder farm stood right here.” Wilder farm? She knows something. Why else would she drag their corpses into our lives? “Rumor has it, the builder knew the history of these grounds and refused to build on it.”
James leans in. “What history?” His eyes grow large, bulging like twin blue eggs.
“The story goes the Wilders were feuding with local Indians.”
“Knew it.” His features set in, a staunch refusing to believe whatever else might stream from her mouth. “There’s always an Indian in the story.”
A dull laugh rattles and dies in my chest. Little does he know there has been an Indian in our story for six short years.
“What happened?” I take a timid step forward, suddenly the ground feels sacred. I’m half-afraid if I comb back the kindling beneath my feet I’ll find the past right there staring back at me in some mirrored world—Reagan locked on the other side, irretrievable.
McCafferty’s nostrils flare. “Tempers heated over who the land belonged to. One night there was a fire in the Wilder home. Both parents were burned alive, but when relatives came, they couldn’t find any of their five young children.”
My heart ratchets up slowly at first, then with the speed and finality of a roller coaster shooting straight to hell.
“What became of them?” I whisper as if they were here lurking somewhere, and I didn’t want to wake them. God knows I don’t want to wake a single ghost from anyone’s past, let alone my own.
She shakes her head, that ultra-tight bun has pulled her eyes back, made her look ten years younger than she is, I’m sure. “Not one of them was ever seen again. The farm became this thing, this folklore, about a dozen urban legends spawned from the very soil you’re standing on. Nobody dared build over it. Some claimed the ground was cursed by those Indians.”
“They took the kids.” James shrugs it off. “Why is that so hard for anybody to believe? It’s the only logical explanation. Or hell, they could have banded together and headed out West. Everyone was doing it. There were no phones, no Google search, no dim-witted police department to help them out. If you wanted to disappear, it was the perfect time to do it.”
McCafferty sheds that signature mocking smile. “That might have been true, but two of the five were blind, one was lame, and the other two were infants.”
“But the Indians still could have taken them, right?” My heart gives a steady knock over my chest and I rub my neck as if pleading with my body to keep from malfunctioning.
“The Indian tribe was raided by the government. They searched high and low for those kids. They swore they didn’t have them. The dim-witted police even went as far as digging up the reservation, looking for bones. Sent in hounds—the whole nine yards.” She steps between James and me while inspecting the ground as if she might come across a skull, a hand spiking up from the soil in need of assistance. “Want to know what the Indians said happened?”
James and I exchange a brief glance, each too weary to admit we don’t.
“They said the ground swallowed them up as a punishment for the sins of their parents. To the tribe, at the time, it was a mercy killing on behalf of the earth. By swallowing the children, they were now one with the soil. They were a part of this deity, this rock they worshipped. It had all somehow come full circle.”
“Sounds like bullshit.” James wipes the sleep from his eyes. That look on his face doesn’t even crest disgust. He’s simply dismissed everything she’s just said to us.