Sisters of Misery (21 page)

THE HORSE-IDEAS

I
can see the outline of your body behind your window shades; I’m curious why you girls seem to come alive at night. You and I are the only ones awake at this late hour. Just like Cordelia. I wonder what you know, what you will discover. It’s only a matter of time before the truth comes out. Would you confront me if you knew?

Why must I continue to suffer? Things will never go back to the way they used to be. Back when I had some control in my life. I see you digging, digging, constantly digging for information.

You go to the town library, the police station, the town hall, pawing through archived newspapers and police documents while I hide in the shadows, watching you collect names, concocting possible scenarios of what made Cordelia disappear. It’s only a matter of time before you learn the secret. Cordelia’s secret. Something that should have been taken care of long ago.

This is one secret that has to remain buried, even if I have to bury you along with it:

Maddie read the letter twice to convince herself that it was real. By the time she finished, her hands were shaking.

Could this actually be coming from the same person who took Cordelia? Or was this just one of Kate’s horribly morbid and cruel jokes? She looked at the writing closely to see if it resembled any of the letters in Cordelia’s locker, but she couldn’t be sure. Most guys she knew all had the same chicken-scratch handwriting anyway, making it nearly impossible to narrow it down to just one person.

Maddie crumpled up the scrawled note that had arrived in an unmarked envelope and been shoved under their front door. Then, thinking better of it, she smoothed out the paper, deciding to bring it down to the police station to make a formal report.

As she jumped into Abigail’s clunker of a car to head over to the police station, Maddie wondered who knew that she was looking into Cordelia’s disappearance. She considered the other people who might have seen her strolling through the tall, cool stacks in the town library or noticed her reading town documents in the Old Town Hall. Maddie hadn’t really made a secret of her intentions. And now there was someone in town who wasn’t keeping his or her unhappiness about her investigation a secret either.

“What does this mean, Sully?” Maddie demanded. Officer Garrett Sullivan’s towering body recoiled as she shoved the paper toward him. He smirked, shaking his head. Even in his crisp uniform and closely cropped hair, he still couldn’t alter the party boy image that remained crystal clear in Maddie’s memory. Despite being a good four years ahead of her, Maddie could still picture him passed out on the floor in a drunken stupor at every party during his time at Hawthorne. Unless, of course, he was hooking up with one of the many girls that followed him like lovesick puppy dogs.

He read the note and then smiled down at her.

“Awww. Come on, Maddie. You don’t take this stuff seriously, do you?”

“Hmmm. Let me think. A direct threat to me if I stay in town? Um, yeah, Sully, I take things like this pretty seriously.”

“Maddie, this was probably written by some jerk-off kid trying to scare you. Maybe someone who used to have a crush on you wants to get your attention again. Or maybe some girl’s jealous of you going off sailing with Reed Campbell. Heck, I don’t know. I just wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about this if I were you,” he said.

“Well, Sully,” Maddie said, anger rising, “you’re not me. Because if you were, then you would realize that this is the first lead to come out of Cordelia’s case in months. If you were me, you would be running fingerprint scans, handwriting analyses, and questioning my neighbors to see if anyone happened to see the person who slipped this note under my door. But you’re not me, and maybe that’s why this case has never been solved.”

Garrett Sullivan’s face turned a deep shade of crimson. “Listen here, Madeline Crane,” he spat. “I know you’re upset by this note, but that doesn’t give you the right to come down here and criticize me and the rest of the force. I’m a damn good cop. I keep these streets safe at night—every night. We haven’t had a crime here in a long time. And to be perfectly honest, there are a lot of folks here who believe that there never
was
a crime to solve when it came to your cousin’s disappearance. Most people think that she just up and took off with some guy. Probably got herself knocked up and was too embarrassed to stick around.”

“How dare you say that to me?” Maddie shrieked, holding back tears. “She’s my cousin, my family. She’s…she was my best friend.”

“Friends don’t always know everything ’bout each other.”

“But I know my cousin—she wouldn’t…she…she couldn’t…”

“Well now, Maddie, I didn’t say that was what I believed.” He had calmed down a bit. “I’m just saying that no one knows
what
happened to Cordelia. And since they never found a body—and a body
always
turns up especially in a small town like this—a lot of people believe that she was never the victim of a crime.”

“But she
was
a victim—” Maddie stopped herself suddenly, fighting the urge to spill everything to Sully right there, right then, not caring about the consequences from the Sisters of Misery. In that instant, the image from her dream flashed into her mind. Cordelia strapped to the tree out on Misery Island. The terrified look in her eyes. Maddie’s feelings of utter helplessness. She suddenly felt like she was going to throw up all over Officer Sullivan’s shoes.

“We don’t typically consider teenaged runaways victims, Maddie, you gotta know that,” he said. “We don’t have enough time and manpower to drag home every teenager who takes off on a whim.”

“Sully,” Maddie said, regaining composure, “we all know Cordelia was a little crazy and wild, but she wouldn’t hurt us like that. That’s why I’m not giving up on her. Not now, not ever. Not if I get a million threatening letters.”

“Good for you, Maddie,” he said in a semicondescending tone. “But I wouldn’t ruffle too many feathers here in town, if you know what I mean. Go ahead and do what you need to do, but it’s always best to let sleeping dogs lie. You don’t want to bring any unwanted attention to you and your family.” Sully’s voice took on a more serious and deliberate tone.

“Are you warning me about digging too deep on this?” Maddie shot back.

“I’m not warning you. But think of it this way: this
is
a small town. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. If people catch wind that you’re looking for one of their own for this crime—if there even was a crime—well…let’s just say that you’ll probably be receiving more than just letters.”

Maddie held herself back from tearing into him. “I’ll be careful not to step on any toes as long as I know that I’ll have protection from the police for me and my family.”

“Listen, I’ll do what I can. You or your family feel threatened, you call me, and I’ll be there in a flash, you understand?” he said in a puffed-up manner.

“I may want to look at some of the archived police records on this case, if that’s alright?”

“Not a problem. Dunno if there’s anything useful in those old files, though.”

“Thank you,” Maddie said, turning to leave. Then just as she got to the door, she turned back to him. “Hey, Sully? How did you know about me and Reed?”

He straightened up and smiled widely. “Small town, Maddie. Real small town.”

SUN

M
addie searched the stacks at the stately Eldridge Library, reading newspapers and police logs. Someone was watching her every action, keeping tabs on her investigation. So if she didn’t let the letter disrupt her routine, perhaps Maddie would learn the identity of her letter-writing stalker. Maddie walked slowly through the aisles, pretending to browse, taking notice of everyone around her. Was anyone watching her? After an hour or so of her “pretend” research, she decided to settle into one of the cubicles and do some real online research. Cordelia came up under a few local articles about missing teenagers, but most of the pieces seemed to focus on the runaway angle. Maddie pulled her notebook out of her leather messenger bag and flipped furiously through the pages, trying to find a quote she’d written down that was in one of her dreams. She typed the phrase,
Do what thou wilt—
something that had been stuck in her head since her dream the other night—into Google. What could it mean? Just before she hit the ENTER button, strong hands gripped her shoulders, and she jumped.

“If you’re looking for something good to read, I can make some suggestions,” a voice came from above her. “And I promise it’s not on the required summer reading list.”

Maddie turned to see Reed smiling at her. He was dressed in a blue button-down Oxford and khaki pants. His wire-rimmed glasses finished off the look of high school English teacher. But the stubble and longish hair made him appear more male model than former Hawthorne Academy faculty member.

She watched as he disappeared quickly into the stacks. His presence at the library didn’t surprise her. Reed’s enthusiasm over books and his students’ reading habits were legendary; Maddie remembered how worked up he used to get in their English classes. The subject didn’t seem to bore him in the way that it appeared to bore the other teachers she’d had through the years. He became passionate about everything they read, whether it was Shakespeare, Tennyson, Faulkner, Hemingway, and even writers of today, like Jonathan Franzen, Joyce Carol Oates, and Toni Morrison.

At the close of every class, he would write a quote on the blackboard from a famous piece of literature, and whoever figured out where it came from (without the help of the Internet, which almost everyone used and then lied about) would get extra points. When he finally caught on that most of his class was going online to find the quotes, he would only award extra credit if the person had actually read the book or play from which the quote originated.

One Friday afternoon in early fall, he sat on the corner of his desk, facing the class, his shirt slightly wrinkled, his tie crooked, and his pants covered in white chalk. He looked like he could be any one of them. He was so young and full of energy that the only thing that separated him from the rest of them was the desk, which was why he rarely sat behind it. The girls in the class hung on every word. The guys idolized him. He was the perfect embodiment of the favorite teacher.

His quote for that week was on the board.

“Any takers on the person who wrote this?” he asked.

“Reed, is this really necessary? I mean, it’s Friday, and some of us have plans,” Kate said smugly. She loved calling him by his first name, as if dating his brother gave her top priority over the rest of them.

Mr. Campbell was not impressed. “Kate, I don’t care about your plans. And as long as we are in the classroom, it’s Mr. Campbell, remember?”

The girls in the class giggled. He rolled his eyes and tapped a long piece of chalk on the board, the elbow patches of his sport coat covered in chalk dust, “Anyone?” he asked again.

Only one hand raised. And not surprisingly, it was Cordelia’s.

“Tolstoy,” she said offhandedly. She started gathering her things because the bell was about to ring.

“Okay,” he smiled. “So what Web site did you pull that off of?”

She shook her head, not understanding. “I don’t have a computer.”

Everyone laughed. Kate and the rest of the girls made exaggerated sighing sounds.

“Listen, I know that everyone looks up my quotes, and I’m fine with that, but to get the extra credit, you will be assigned the book.”

“I don’t need extra credit,” she said, sounding annoyed. She waited until the laughter and the hoots died down, cleared her throat, and then said loudly, “‘
Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.’
It was said by Prince Andrew in
War and Peace
. I’ve already read it, have a copy of it at my house, and if you would like me to write a book report on it, I will gladly do it.”

As soon as the bell rang, everyone grabbed their books and backpacks and filed out of the room. Kate blew Mr. Campbell a kiss and said, “See you later, Reed.”

“Cordelia, can you hold back a minute?”

Cordelia held up a finger to Maddie, indicating that she’d only be a minute. Maddie hung around outside the door, and when she peeked in, she noticed Mr. Campbell looking at Cordelia with such admiration that to this day, it made her ache with jealousy. If Cordelia noticed, she didn’t let on. Cordelia dealt with the attention of men as if it was a given that they would fall all over themselves around her. Maddie never thought that anything would happen between Reed and Cordelia, but if she could have read Reed Campbell’s mind at that very moment, somehow she knew that she wouldn’t have been happy with what she’d found.

Reed returned with a big stack of books and plopped them down next to her. She scanned some of the titles:
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, On the Road, Catch-22.
“This is your reading mission, Ms. Crane, if you should choose to accept it.”

Maddie eyed the pile, recognizing the exact books in Cordelia’s room. It seemed as though Reed wanted all of his “girlfriends” to take an interest in his reading habits. Even without Cordelia around, Maddie still felt like she was competing for Reed’s attention. “What, no Tolstoy? I thought that was required reading for all your favorite students,” she said, hating the snaking, jealous “pick me” feeling that came over her, but helpless to stop it. Maddie packed up her belongings, suddenly wanting to be anywhere other than with Reed Campbell.

He stood there watching her.

“
Anna Karenina,
” Maddie tossed over her shoulder, leaving him standing there, completely taken aback and speechless.

Maddie was halfway down the stairs leading out of the library when she realized she’d left her reading glasses at the computer terminal. When she got up to the reading room, Reed was gone. She returned to the cubicle where she’d left her reading glasses and realized that she had never finished her search on that phrase. Luckily, her search terms were still up on the screen.
Do what thou wilt
, blinked in the Search box. With one click, Maddie discovered the origin of the quote. It came from The Law of Thelema, an ancient British magic order similar to the black magic witchcraft that the women of Salem were accused of so many years ago. The organization was headed up by an Aleister Crowley. The name seemed familiar, so Maddie did a quick search for him online. A strangled sound came from Maddie’s throat as she read about the man whose words were used that night out on Misery Island. Aleister Crowley, known as the “wickedest man in the world,” was widely regarded as a Satanist.

Who had called that phrase out into the black night? Maddie just prayed it wasn’t Cordelia’s voice that was ringing in her ears.

“I thought you left.” Reed’s voice snapped her out of her daze. She was still staring at the computer in the library, not quite sure how long she’d been sitting there. “You okay? You look like you saw a ghost or something.”

Maddie looked up at Reed and shook her head slightly, a frown still firmly in place.

“I’m just stressed right now, Reed,” Maddie said, quickly closing the browser before he could see what she was reading.

“Is that why you stormed out of here before?” he asked.

Maddie shrugged.

“Let me take you to the Willows then. It’ll be fun,” he insisted. “I’ll buy you some cotton candy. It’ll cheer you up. Come on.” Salem Willows was a relatively run-down place filled with carnival rides and games, a giant old-fashioned carousel, penny candy, and coin-operated fortune-telling machines. Maddie remembered thinking it was great fun when she was younger—larger than life. Now she saw it for what it was, just an ancient amusement area by the ocean. A place that was very much like Hawthorne—untouched by time.

Maddie was reluctant, but at least it gave her a good excuse to stay out of the house for a little while longer, a place that was becoming more tension filled by the day. Reed drove them into Salem, past the shade of the sweeping willow trees, and parked in front of the old-fashioned attractions. She wandered through the arcade while Reed went off to find them something to eat. She plunked her quarter into the Ski Ball game and held the small wooden ball to her eye, aiming for the center hole at the Ski Ball lane. Just before she rolled the ball, Reed whispered in her ear, “You’re off center,” causing her to jump forward and slam her shin on the metal bar of the Ski Ball lane.

“Jesus!” Maddie yelled as she turned to face him. “That’s the second time today! Do you always sneak up on people like this?”

Reed grinned an apology, then offered her a choice of cotton candy or a corn dog. Maddie relaxed a bit. She and Reed played all the old coin-operated carnival games—all still in perfect working order—like Ski Ball, Kiss-A-Meter, and the coin press. Maddie enjoyed the nickel and dime machines where you could make the puppets dance and the monkeys play instruments and especially enjoyed kicking Reed’s butt at air hockey. It was the first time she had felt relaxed and completely at ease in months, and yet she still pulled away every time Reed gave her an affectionate touch or squeeze.

But as the afternoon went on, she couldn’t deny how much she enjoyed his company. He even made futile attempts at knocking down milk cans with a baseball in an attempt to win her a god-awful stuffed animal, the kind that was so stiff and ugly, you could just tell it had been sitting there for years, the felt mouth and googly eyes barely hanging on.

While Reed finished up his game, Maddie wandered over to Madame Zelda’s Mysterious Crystal Ball and plunked a quarter in to see what the future had in store for her. Secretly, she was hoping it would say something about the object of her affection returning her love twofold, but when she read the fortune card, her happy mood changed:

Maddie pushed the uncomfortable feelings from her mind, shoved the fortune into her jeans pocket, and went to find Reed. He had given up on the milk bottle toss and had returned to Ski Ball, racking up a large number of orange tickets, which were curling out of the machine.

“I think I’m ready to call it,” he said in a mock defeated tone. “You want to cash these babies in for something?” He reached down and pulled the line of tickets and handed them over to her.

“Gee, thanks,” Maddie said sarcastically. “I bet I have enough here to get a spider ring or maybe even a whistle.” He playfully shoved his shoulder against hers and then tickled her side. She yelped and jumped out of his reach. “Excuse me while I go collect my winnings.”

Maddie turned away from him, flushed from the attention. She could have sworn that several times that day, he’d let his fingers linger a bit longer on her own, she could feel his eyes on her when she wasn’t looking, and she even sensed that he was intentionally holding back and playing up the older brother act. At that moment, he came up behind her and swung his arm up around her shoulder, giving her an obvious “buddy” squeeze.

“So, what are we picking out today?” he asked the bored, acne-faced kid behind the counter. There wasn’t much she could get with fifteen tickets, so she decided on a small package of Candy Cigarettes, Bit-O-Honey, and Jaw Breakers (the place was so old-fashioned that even the candy was from another decade). As she was collecting her booty, Reed plopped an adorable stuffed frog prince on the counter.

“What…when…how did you get this?” Maddie was dumbfounded. She tried to internally rationalize his attentions. He was only twenty-two, not
that
much older. And he did seem to be having a good time, didn’t he?

She just stood there, smiling awkwardly, until Reed broke the silence.

Maddie wracked her brain, trying to think of where she’d heard that poem before.

“Sylvia Plath?” she asked.

“Close,” he said, smiling. “Anne Sexton.”

“‘The Frog Prince’, of course!” Maddie laughed, clutching her prize. “Very clever, Reed, very clever.”

Maddie felt her resolve crumbling. What was going on between them?

When Reed dropped her off at home that evening, she had a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach. After leaving the Willows, she replayed the day in her mind—how they had strolled the boardwalk, eating ice cream cones and feeding the seagulls—and for a little while, Maddie was able to leave the craziness of the past few months behind her. Then she noticed another envelope crammed into the mailbox, and reality came crashing back. Maddie hoped that Sully was right—it was just a stupid prank. The envelope had the same block printing as the first letter—and no return address or stamp. This was a hand delivery.