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Authors: Sarah Langan

The Missing

BOOK: The Missing
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HarperCollins
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The Missing

THE

MISSING

SARAH LANGAN

For J. T. Petty

Crises, precipitate change.

—Virus, Deltron 3030

Contents

Epigraph
iii

PROLOGUE: WINTER
1

PART ONE:
CONTAMINATION
7

ONE

Where Are You Going,

Where Have You Been?
9

TWO

The Monster in the
Woods
31

PART TWO:
INCUBATION
45

THREE

Splitting
Atoms
47

FOUR

The War
Between the States
63

FIVE

Robitussin for What
Ails You!
77

SIX

The Melancholy Choir
90

SEVEN

Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’
103

EIGHT

The Hunger
113

PART THREE: INFECTION
121

NINE

The Human
Trick
123

TEN

Babes in the
Woods
126

ELEVEN

It Was So Sad It Was Funny,

or Maybe It Was So Funny It Was
Sad
139

TWELVE

God Only Knows
151

THIRTEEN

Make Friends and Solve Crime

in Your Spare
Time!
158

FOURTEEN

A House Divided
173

FIFTEEN

The Fat Kids Kept Coughing
181

SIXTEEN

I Hate You!
190

SEVENTEEN

The Dandy
197

EIGHTEEN

Bloody Carpet
205

NINETEEN

Leaky Eyes
220

TWENTY

An Itch in Her
Bones
225

TWENTY-ONE

Romeo
and Juliet
231

TWENTY-TWO

A House in Ruins
242

TWENTY-THREE

Wheel of Fortune
255

PART FOUR: DISEASE
263

TWENTY-FOUR

Quarantine
265

TWENTY-FIVE

It’s Okay to Eat Fish, ’Cause

They Don’t Have Any Feelings
273

TWENTY-SIX

Juliet, the Belly
Dancer
290

TWENTY-SEVEN

Going Lou McGuffin
295

TWENTY-EIGHT

Witch
306

TWENTY-NINE

Brother’s Keeper
316

THIRTY

From
Death, Life
326

THIRTY-ONE

The Lump
in the Bed
328

THIRTY-TWO

Mostly It Was Just Plain
Sad
333

THIRTY-THREE

The Victorian
338

THIRTY-FOUR

Room
69
345

THIRTY-FIVE

The Cellar
350

THIRTY-SIX

Quickening
352

THIRTY-SEVEN

Mad-e-line!
354

THIRTY-EIGHT

My Heart Stopped Beating,

But Still I Go
On
360

THIRTY-NINE

The Persistence of Silence

366

FORTY

Cyanide
368

FORTY-ONE

Choke
376

FORTY-TWO

Escape
382

FORTY-THREE

Hunger Pangs
384

FORTY-FOUR

Separation
392

FORTY-FIVE

King Solomon’s
Dilemma
394

FORTY-SIX

Luck and Divinity
397

EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR PRAISE

OTHER BOOKS BY SARAH LANGAN COVER

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

PROLOGUE

WINTER

I

n winter the dark creeps up on you. I’ve hardly fin- ished my dinner and the sky right now is black. There

is no electricity anymore, so I navigate at night with candles. The flames throw shadows that assume pecu- liar and familiar shapes. All the animals are dead, even the squirrels and rabbits. Come to think of it, I have not even heard a cricket. Through the cracks in my win- dows and chimney flue, there is only the howling wind, and underneath that, barely discernible screams.

But let me begin at the beginning: once upon a time. Once upon a time Corpus Christi was a sleepy, con- tented place. Early mornings were silent affairs, dis- turbed only by the sounds of spoons stirring coffee and alarms set to talk radio with the volume turned low. We were a tightly knit community, and during the sum- mers our children roamed free. At night the younger ones played manhunt on front lawns while the older sneaked beer by the river. They each thought they were getting away with something, as if the rest of us did not

remember with fondness those same rites of passage.

Unlike the rest of Mid-Maine, where the only queues to be found were at the unemployment offices, Corpus Christi thrived. Our hospital had the best cancer research

4 Sarah Langan

facilities on the East Coast, and lured doctors from as far south as New York. We were scientists and bankers, artists and teachers, and our stores were all family owned. Each year Wal-Mart tried to plant its roots along the side of our highway, but in a unanimous vote every spring, we salted the earth.

But even before the bad business with James Walker, there were signs. That spring, a fire at the Clott Paper Mill in nearby Bedford fanned sulfurous clouds into our skies that burned our eyes for days. The chemistry of the woods changed after that, and our trees began to die. While there was no unemployment line, state fund- ing cuts and rampant lawsuits year after year took their toll, and we watched our hospital decline. Fresh coats of paint, new slate roofs, dents in cars that needed to be hammered right again, were all postponed for one year, and then another, and sometimes another. As if we’d been infected by Maine’s economic disease, we knew that layoffs and closed shops were soon to follow. But back then, our welcome signs were bright and cheerful, and our streets paved, and our lawns neat and green. We took pride in where we came from, and we expected good things from our futures.

Still, there were signs. The summer before James Walker, my husband and I stopped sleeping through the night. I used to sit in my kitchen with a cup of milky Lipton tea until chirping birds signaled the coming dawn. I could feel something expectant waiting to open its eyes inside me, as if my body knew what my mind could not guess. If I look hard enough, I can find all kinds of signs. On a family vacation, I can remember seeing my daughter swim out past the breaking waves. It was not her hands, but her hair that sank last. I hesi- tated before I jumped in after her and pulled her out.

THE MISSING 5

Perhaps a part of me knew what my mind could not guess, and had wanted to save myself a broken heart.

But I digress.

I have a story for you. Forgive me if it seems I’m tell- ing you things that I could not possibly know. This is a small town, and you hear gossip. Besides, the dead do speak.

So gather round, as I used to tell the children during story hour. Gather round.

PART ONE

CONTAMINATION

O N E

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

“G

eorge?” Lois Larkin called out to her fourth- grade class. Her voice was muffled, and she

held the attendance book close to her nose. It was a sunny Tuesday morning in September, and the clock tower had not yet chimed nine a.m.

“Uh huh,” George answered. He was chewing on a red Crayola.

Lois raised her wet eyes from the book. “George, don’t eat that. It’ll make you thick.” Then she took a deep breath, just like she’d learned in speech therapy, and corrected herself: “Sick.”

George pulled the crayon out of his mouth. Its entire top half was missing, and his teeth were coated in red wax. Lois shook her head. George Sanford: not the brightest of God’s children.

Lois Larkin was twenty-nine years old, and had been teaching fourth grade since she’d moved back to Cor- pus Christi seven years ago. Her figure was slender but curvy—what the barflies at the Dew Drop Inn called “slammin’.” When the boys and even the girls in her class daydreamed out the window, they were usually

fantasizing about the feel of her long, black hair, and the scent of her NILLA Wafer–flavored breath.

Kids loved Lois. Parents loved her. Drunks hooted happily at her. Even animals flocked to her. Lois was lovely save for one flaw. The space between her two front teeth was so wide she could cram a pencil through the gap. She’d submitted to six years of braces through middle and high school to close it, but nary a month after the metal cage in her mouth was clipped, her teeth migrated to their nascent terra firma, and the gap returned. When she was excited she lisped, and spit sprayed through the fissure, landing like an indifferent plague on the faces of friends and foes alike. Today, for example, the open page of her attendance book was damp.

“Jameth Walker?” Lois asked. “Here,” James called.

“No kicking, James. Feet thraight ahead . . . straight ahead.”

“Yeth, Mith Loith,” James sang. His smug grin spread from ear to ear. Lois’s first instinct was to crack the boy on the head with her soft book, but instead she conti- nued.

“Caroline?”

“Here, Miss Lois!” Caroline waved both hands in the air and squirmed in her chair like she had to take a piss. It occurred to Lois that maybe she didn’t like kids so much.

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