The Creeping (24 page)

There's a distant grumble of thunder. I look up, and my face is splattered with more raindrops.

“Sure. You ready, Stella?” Sam asks.

I nod and then hesitate. “Wait. I want to see something.” I turn on my heels, dragging Zoey along, heading to where the little girl was found. Our shoes slip and slide in the mud. The gold straps of Zoey's sandals are speckled with dirt. The yowling wind picks up, and the willows rock angrily back and forth. A flash of lightning illuminates the sky and a clap of thunder comes right after. I follow a stone path that twists and turns through the core of the cemetery. We snake around the corner of a large mausoleum. Fluorescent yellow police tape marks a perimeter around the mudslide.

“It's just upturned earth,” Sam says behind us. “They removed all the bones and fragments from the coffins so they could reconstruct what was destroyed. I heard that the anthropology and forensic science departments at U of M are going to restore the skeletons.”

Sam's right. It's nothing but black and wet collapsed earth, edged by the mossy bank of the cemetery. “I guess it was silly that I wanted to see it again. I just thought that maybe it could help,” I say. Zoey drops my hand and wraps her arm around me.

“It's okay, doll,” she says. I let her lead me a few steps before something bright catches my eye. I pull away.

To the right of the slide, where the wrought-iron fence washed away with the mud, is a cluster of white candles at the base of an old oak. The tree's roots, with the look of knuckles poking up from the dirt, obscured our view of the wax pillars as we approached the slide. The flames have been extinguished by rain, but the heady char of smoke is still in the air. The candles form a perfect circle, and at their center is the corpse of a tabby cat.

T
ripping forward, I call back to Zoey, “Don't look.” She's at my side, squatting by the strange altar, a moment later. The tabby's rust-colored fur is threadbare, and its tiny rib cage pokes through the mangy coat. The circle of candles allows for a few inches of space around the cat's prostrate body. There are no other objects within their borders, but there is a smear of red at the base of the oak's trunk. It's bright and wet.

“Blood,” Zoey breathes, staring at the same charnel graffiti. “The cat's?”

“Probably,” I whisper. A jagged tear rings the cat's neck like a bloody necklace. I gently nudge the head and it rolls, unattached from the body, pupils focused on me as it tumbles. It rocks to a stop, the creature's little pink spongy tongue sticking out.

“Ewww!” Zoey screams, throwing herself backward, landing on her butt in the mud. She scurries to her feet and ducks behind Sam; one watering eye peeks out from behind his shoulder.

“Stella, come on. Let's go back to the car and call the cops.” Sam speaks steady and slow. I shake my head for a moment. How can I leave this helpless little animal alone? I scour the ground for anything I can use to cover the cat. There's nothing but a loose wad of police tape. I edge toward the head, trying not to see the purple-and-red jelly of its wound. I fold the tape over the head, nimble fingers becoming fat and clumsy, brushing a damp ear. I choke down a whimper and whirl away.

I tail Sam and Zoey through the cemetery. Everything is watery from tears and pounding rain. I try to rub away the sensation of the cat's fur on my palm, but I can't. I feel it under my skin rather than on it.

We sprint through the gravel lot and rush inside the station wagon. I wipe the steam from the window and squint out to where the other two cars were parked. They're gone.

“W-who would do something like that?” Zoey stammers. Sam fumbles with the buttons on his cell, fingertips slippery and blue. I cross my arms over my face and close my eyes. I try to take refuge in the blackness, but the image of the cat's rolling head is burned on the insides of my eyelids.

Sam's on the phone with the police station. “Yes. That's what I said, a dead cat . . . No, not hit by a car . . . Excuse me, but someone butchering a pet
is
a serious police matter . . . . Hello? Hello?”

With a clatter, he tosses his phone on the dashboard. “They hung up on me. With everything going on, you'd think they'd take something like this seriously.”

My arms droop to my sides, and I stare at the worn ceiling of
the car. A yellowed spot stares back. I want to call Shane. Spill everything we've been up to. But I can't risk getting sent to Chicago, not when human lives are at stake. “Everything going on is probably why they're
not
taking it seriously, Sam. They don't see that everything is connected,” I murmur, drawing imaginary lines from stain to stain just like connect-the-dots. “There were cars parked over there”—I tap against the window—“and now they're gone. We didn't see anyone in the cemetery.” I pause. Look back up at the stains. “You don't think they were doing that to the cat while we were in there, do you?” My stomach lurches.

“No, I'm sure it—uh—he or she had been dead for a while.” Sam sounds hopeful, not certain. He turns the key in the ignition, and the wagon springs alive.

“I've got to drop you guys off so I can get to my shift at BigBox.” He indicates the car's digital clock.

I know Zoey is traumatized, because she misses the opportunity to say something snide. Instead she murmurs weakly, “Bring me home. I'm going to puke.”

The ride back is mostly quiet. Zoey gives me a quick hug and nods to Sam before running into her house through the dumping rain. I focus on the canvas of my tennis shoes as we cut through town. I've hit my threshold for twisted today—not just today, for a lifetime. I don't need to see my neighbors patrolling the streets in armed posses or building bonfires to burn witches.

“Is your dad going to be home tonight?” Sam asks as we pull into my driveway.

“Probably not until late.” A little spike of terror runs through me. I don't want to be alone. There'll be too much time to think. Too much time for nightmares—real and imagined.

“I get off at nine. If you want, I could come over.”

“I'd like that,” I say speedily, too relieved to care about playing it cool. He smiles a little sadly as he leaves me waving from my porch. I exhale deeply and force myself to push through the front door.

Two hours later, showered, fed, and a little less ragged, I curl on the couch with my laptop.

“Okay, back to it,” I say to Moscow, who's purring loudly from the opposite end of the couch. I need answers, and this is the only way I know to find them. Since all evidence points to a multigenerational cult at work in Savage, and the cat, butchered on a makeshift altar, screams twisted sacrifice, I search three terms: “cult sacrifice,” “animal sacrifice,” and “child sacrifice.” I start with general searches on Wikipedia and Google.

After snowdrifts of bizarro articles, I'm too queasy to wade through all the dementedness anymore. I need to narrow results, since it's unlikely that Savage residents are performing an obscure ancient Chinese ritual of sacrificing people to the river deities or that the fictional Cthulhu Mythos has been brought to life in our small town. I get the point: There are sickos out there, and they believe all sorts of warped things.

Next I search the same terms but limit the results geographically to Minnesota. Using search engines, I come up with a load of indie bands and heavy metal groups with the terms in their names.
I switch to searching news databases and subscription websites like LexisNexis, which we use for the
Herald
, but I don't find a single article about any cults, legends, or lore in Minnesota that says an iota about sacrifice or redheads.

No shortage of death and dismemberment, though. This area's history is grisly, not the oasis-in-the-wilderness fantasy I remember learning about in school. Fur traders settled their outposts here and massacred the wildlife. Pioneers drove the natives from their villages. Colonial wars left mass casualties. And outbreaks of tuberculosis, called “the white death,” wasted the population. I gulp. Maybe there's something to the name of our town after all? Yet none of this has anything to do with Jeanie or the tortured cat in the cemetery.

Moscow arches his back, showing off his chubby tummy. “You brilliant little pig,” I coo to him. I bring up the Savage Public Library's webpage and click on the news archives. All of the town's records aren't available, but it's worth a try. I search “animal sacrifices.” Zero results. I glower at the screen.
I was so sure.
I'm about to close my laptop and give in to my sulk and that pint of ice cream in the freezer when something occurs to me. I type “animal disappearances”; holding my breath, I hit enter.

I blow out the breath in a whoosh of dismay. I was right. Seventy-three entries for missing pets in the
Savage
Bee
's classifieds fill the screen. The newspaper still devotes its last four pages to community classifieds: rummage sale notices, job postings, houses and cars for sale, and missing pets. I hunch over the laptop and scroll through them, my throat getting tighter with each. There are holes in what's
available, multiple-year blocks where no search results are yielded, but there's enough for it to be a kick in the chest. There are entries dating from 1910 to 2014. Some entries are even from the same week. Families missing dogs and cats, local farms missing livestock, the nursery school missing a goat from their petting zoo, all posted in the classifieds in the hope that someone will find their animal and return it.

I drag Moscow into my lap and cradle him protectively. There's even one article published in the newspaper on a bizarre number of dog disappearances in November of 1938. This isn't shocking; ten Fidos going missing is the definition of small-town news. For the seventy-three missing pets that are posted in the classifieds, there must be tens that went unreported. I bet if I went to the library and spent hours looking through the archives, there would be scores more that haven't been scanned into the system—just like Sam's articles about the missing girls.

“Why would someone do this?” I think of the butchered tabby cat. Someone went to the trouble of making an altar of candles and sacrificing the poor cat in the place where Jane Doe was found. Aren't sacrifices usually meant to appease some awful thing? To stop something bad from happening? If all these animals were taken to be sacrificed—I suck in my breath hard—then there were bad things happening around them.

I search for violent crimes and deaths in the archive. With a notebook and pen I chart a time line, staring at the computer screen until my lids are like sandpaper on my eyeballs and my mouth is
almost as dry. It isn't comprehensive. I don't have time to read every boxed-up and disintegrating newspaper in the archives at the library to flesh it out. I also remember what Sam said about there being more newspapers donated from the years closer to 1972 than further back in time. The distribution of dots on my time line tells the same story. There are even more dots after 1973, since the
Savage Bee
was rebuilt and the records preserved.

I sit back against the couch and behold the ten-page time line spread over the coffee table: tragic deaths and accidents and their corresponding clusters of animal disappearances.

“Oh. My. Freaking. Gosh,” I say to Moscow. He yawns loll-eyed. My phone buzzes loudly from where I kicked it across the living room floor an hour ago. I crawl toward it; a little current of anticipation runs through me as I spot Sam's name on the screen.

“Hi,” I say, sounding too jittery.

“Hey. I'll be there in ten and didn't want to scare you ringing the doorbell without warning. I brought supplies to cook dinner if you haven't eaten.” I stare bewildered at the laptop's clock. How is it past nine?

“Thanks. I totally lost track of time.”

Once the call ends, I dial Dad.

He's worn-out answering, his voice thin. “Hi, Pumpkin. Everything all right?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to let you know I'm home and that Sam Worth is coming over to make food and watch a movie.”

“Oh, good. Listen, Stella, I'm really sorry I haven't been around
much for you with everything going on. I'm working on a complex tax evasion case that's demanding most of my attention, and I can't let any of the details slip through the cracks.” I mouth the next part along with him, because I've heard it a billion times before. “You know the devil's always in the details with cases like this.” Goose bumps spread up my arms.

“It's okay, Dad. Really. So you'll be pretty late?”

“We've got the whole team working through the night.”

“ 'Kay. Well, love you and drive carefully,” I say, knowing full well I sound buckets more like a parent than he does.

At least I don't have time to mope. I sprint upstairs to change the clothes I've been marinating in all afternoon. Right as I swing open my closet, the doorbell rings. I swap my hoodie for a black tank and wrestle on a pair of jeans.

Thirty seconds later I'm breathy but there to let Sam in.

“Hey,” I pant, flinging open the door. Sam stands on the porch, one arm around a bag full of groceries, the other around a bouquet of flowers. He shakes the thatch of hair off his forehead.

I stand half-dazed in the doorway, trying to blink the stars from my eyes. It's not only that he brought flowers, that I don't want to be alone, that he said he'd be here and now he is and few people actually stick around when they say they will. It's that I haven't looked at Sam—or maybe anyone—this way since I was little. Everyone else's insults and opinions fall away so that he's only Sam to me, and my whole body hums to be near him.

“Hi.” He glances awkwardly from armload to armload. “I know this isn't a
date or anything,” he adds quickly. I imagine a muddy boot stepping on the papery-winged butterflies fluttering in my chest. Whoa there, tiger, rein the roller-coaster emotions in.