by A J Rivers
I park close to the gate of the elementary school and get out. For a second, I just stand by the side of my car and let the feelings of the area come over me. I’m still not sure what Xavier meant when he told me to feel the place where I was. I know that means something to him. He lives his life interpreting the world around him in a completely different way than I do. So I try. I try to see it through his perception, to experience a place or an event on a level that goes beyond just the five senses I’ve always relied on.
I can’t help but notice the distinctly eerie feeling that comes over me here. I know something traumatic happened here, and I’m not convinced it doesn’t have anything to do with Ashley and her disappearance. The DNA proved the remains of the stillborn baby weren’t related to her, but I keep getting drawn back to that rock sitting next to the tree and the picture Ashley shared before her disappearance.
Some traces of the investigation are still in the schoolyard. A couple of the pieces of bright yellow police line haven’t been removed from the fence, and wooden markers stick up from the ground where the investigators divided up the area in a grid to organize the search. They instantly remind me of the bright pink pieces of plastic dotting the gravel and grass alongside the train tracks near Feathered Nest.
Those markers were there for so long after the tragic and gruesome death of a young woman who briefly thought she’d escaped the clutches of a serial killer. And in a way, she had. She managed to get away from him, to not die while he watched. She just didn’t know that while she was running through those woods, the marks from the dog chain around her neck, that she was already dead. Even if the train hadn’t come, she wouldn’t have survived her injuries.
It makes me wonder how long these markers will stay in place. This is a much more heavily visited spot than the land beside the train track weaving through woods and open farmland. The police may not come back for them, but I can’t imagine they’ll simply be left alone. Someone who comes here out of morbid curiosity will take them. For now, they are lingering evidence of the sharp turn this case has taken, and all the questions still left to be answered.
I walk through the gate and across the abandoned playground to the tree. The stone is gone, inevitably brought in as evidence. It’s sitting in a cardboard box in a locker somewhere now, waiting for someone to figure out who left it there. In its place is a gaping hole in the ground. It’s much larger than I would have expected it to be. But the investigators likely started the dig anticipating, like many did, that they would be digging up the body of a thirteen-year-old girl. Not one of a preterm fetus.
Trying to put myself into the position of a teenager wanting to come to this place to be away from adults and enjoy myself, I walk over to the rusted old merry-go-round and lower myself down onto it. The heat of the August sun has soaked into the metal throughout the day, making it warm as I sit down.
I left the hospital during that tenuous time of day when the sun is still out, but it’s clinging to those last few moments. Now it’s given up and evening has taken over quickly. Around me, long shadows stretch out from the old equipment and tall trees.
This would be very much like how it was the day Ashley went missing. It wasn’t as overcast today as it was then. There hasn’t been any recent rain, but a chill still starts to build in the air. It reminds me of Allison’s mention of Ashley’s sweatshirt.
Curiosity makes me take out my phone and scroll through a search until I find a list of the weather from that week five years ago. It was raining and unseasonably chilly in the days leading up to her going missing. Though the continuous rain had stopped by that day, the temperature was still low and there were some showers in the late evening and overnight.
I can’t imagine Allison and Vivian camping in the rain. The area they showed me wasn’t big enough to accommodate a large tent, which means if they were there, they had just put up something small. A type of tent that would likely leak in the rain. Yet neither one of them mentioned rain overnight.
A sound off to one side breaks me out of my thoughts and I’m instantly sharply aware of my surroundings. My senses intensify and my muscles tighten, preparing for whatever might be waiting for me. I hear another sound; this time it’s unmistakable. Footsteps. They are muffled by the grass and the layer of fallen leaves from seasons of neglect, but they are definitely there.
Someone else is in the schoolyard. The shadows conceal whoever It is, leaving me at a disadvantage. Standing up slowly, I place my hand on my gun.
“Who’s there?” I demand. “This is Emma Griffin of the FBI. I’m armed. Come out slowly.”
This time when I hear the footsteps, they’re accompanied by a sound that blends with the rustling leaves, but comes out higher. Crying.
I walk toward the sound and see a figure in the darkness near the tree. It steps out into the moonlight. The faint haze of an old streetlight in the alley behind the schoolyard illuminates her face.
“Allison,” I say, both relieved and aggravated. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry,” she starts. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I didn’t know you were here.”
“You’ve been here the whole time?” I ask.
She nods and looks back toward the alley. “I parked back there. That’s how we always used to get in here. That way if the police did drive by, they didn’t see our cars or catch us sneaking in or out.”
“So, you did come here a lot,” I say.
She nods, her face starting to clench as a new wave of tears comes over her. She wipes them away, but there’s nothing that will stop them.
“All the time. Any time we could get out without our parents, this is where we came,” she says.
“Including the night Ashley disappeared,” I say.
She nods again and draws in a shuddering breath. “Yes.”
“Allison, why are you here tonight? Is Vivian with you? Someone else?”
“No. I’m here alone. I don’t come here with anyone anymore. Just alone.”
“Why?”
She looks at the tree and dissolves in sobs. I put my gun back in the holster and walk over to her, wrapping my arms around her shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers through her tears. “I’m so sorry.”
“Allison, what happened? I need you to tell me the truth now,” I say.
She gets herself together and nods, stepping out of my hands to walk over to the tree. Kneeling down beside the hole in the ground, she rests one of her hands gently inside. Her fingers clench in, digging down into the dirt slightly as her hand shakes.
“What we told you about the rain and wanting to get out of the house was all true. It was August, which meant of course we were thinking about having to go back to school. Ashley was going into the eighth grade. She was already talking about how it was her last year in middle school before she was going to get to join us in high school. She was so excited. She never felt like the other kids her age,” Allison says.
“Why is that?” I ask.
Allison shrugs slightly. “She just had a different mindset, I guess. We went to the park and we were going to camp. My boyfriend and Tegan got there. It was just like we said. We went to the abandoned campground. We hiked around some. But then my boyfriend and I got in an argument. I wasn’t feeling well and he wanted some… alone time with me.”
“You wouldn’t give him sex and he got mad at you,” I say.
I need her to stop being vague, to stop with the delicate way she’s presenting things and be straight up with me. There have been enough secrets and enough misconceptions at this point.
“Yes,” she admits. “He got mad and left. I was upset and it was starting to rain a little, so we decided to go hang out at the elementary school for a while to see if it would stop. We were planning on coming back, because we didn’t really have anywhere else to go for the night. All the different parents thought we were with another family. Tegan brought us, but he dropped us off. He went to find my boyfriend, so he could ta
lk to him.
“Vivian had managed to sneak some liquor from her father’s collection and brought it with us. We didn’t really drink all that often. It wasn’t as if it was all we did. But that night I was upset and stressed and feeling sick. I just didn’t want to think about anything. So, I drank a little. Then Vivian drank some and convinced Ashley to as well. Then everything happened.”
“You gave birth,” I say.
She nods. “When you hear about women having babies, you always hear how long it takes. That it’s this long, drawn-out process and takes hours. For me, it was like everything inside me ripped apart. The pain was horrible. It started like a cramp, then it got so bad I couldn’t even stand up. Vivian and Ashley were scared. Ashley wanted me to go to the hospital, but I said no. I knew what was happening and I didn’t want anyone else to find out. I wasn’t thinking straight. She ended up taking my phone and calling my boyfriend. I guess she thought he would come and force me to go to the hospital.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No,” she says. “By the time he got there, the baby had already come. I couldn’t believe it had actually happened.”
“Did you know you were pregnant?”
“I didn’t know for sure. I hadn’t gone to a doctor or taken a test or anything. I had missed some periods and was having a few minor symptoms, but I pushed it out of my mind. It wasn’t something I wanted to think about or even consider a possibility. My boyfriend and I had only started having sex a few months before, so I knew the baby couldn’t possibly be ready to be born.”
“You lost your virginity to him,” I say.
“Yes. And like they say, it only takes one time. I was only four months along. Almost five. Not far enough for the baby to survive.”
“So, it was a stillbirth,” I say. “The baby wasn’t alive when it was born.”
“No,” she mutters, shaking her head and staring back down into the hole as if she was seeing it all unfold in front of her again.
“Did you have a boy or a girl?” I ask.
I want to humanize the moment for her, to bring her into the full reality of it. She’s been hiding this for five years; in that time, I can only imagine she’s found so many ways to convince herself it didn’t really happen. To justify what she did that night. But it’s been eating at her. Chipping away at everything inside her.
She lets out a sob but also smiles. “A boy. He was so beautiful. He looked like a tiny little doll. So perfect. I tried so hard to save him. All I wanted to do was wake him up. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I wanted him to breathe. I wanted to hear him cry. I would have done anything.”
Allison collapses in tears, leaning over so they fall into the grave she dug for her son five years ago. Her hands grip at the ground as though she’s trying to find something to anchor her, to hold her in place.
“What happened?” I ask softly.
“I didn’t want to admit he was gone, but Vivian and my boyfriend looked at him. They told me he wasn’t breathing, that his heart wasn’t beating. He was blue. Nothing was going to save him. I didn’t want anyone to take him from me, so I wrapped him in my shirt and I buried him. We made him a gravestone and said a prayer over him. It was all I could do for him.”
Her voice has fallen low and she looks lost in her thoughts.
“Did you name him?” I ask.
That makes her look up at me with a wistful, agonized smile on her dripping lips. “Charlie.”
“I like that.”
“He would be five years old next week. He’d be starting kindergarten in September,” she says. “He should have been born in December. A Christmas baby. I’ve gotten him a Christmas present every year. I keep them in my closet in a box I made for him. I never want him to be forgotten.”
Her head drops and her shoulders shake with renewed sobs. “I should have gone to the hospital. I should have listened to Ashley. If I had, none of this would ever have happened. Nothing would have happened.”
Thirty-Six
“You said Ashley was upset,” I say. “She wanted you to go to the hospital before the baby came.”
“Yes,” Allison says.
“Is that when you argued? Did you get mad at her and she left?” I ask.
It makes sense. I can understand Ashley arguing with her friend as she tried to convince her the best thing to do would be to call for help. She might not have wanted to be a part of what was happening and walked away. This was a familiar area to her. She had come here many times before, and likely thought it would be no problem to make her way home, even without the others.
They had all been clear with me that Ashley’s parents would pick her up without question from anywhere if she called them. Maybe that was what happened. She wanted to remain loyal to her friends and not admit the truth to the adults, so she walked a distance away from the abandoned school, intending to call her parents and get a ride home.
What happened after that remained a mystery to everyone.
Except, Allison isn’t telling that story. She’s still staring down into the grave and I can see she’s holding onto something.
“She didn’t leave. She was here the whole time. But she was so upset. Vivian told her to drink more. She said it would help her get through it. That maybe she wouldn’t remember. I had never seen Ashley drink that much, but I couldn’t think about anything but Charlie. By the time I was even aware of anything else, Tegan was trying to wake her up. She was sick, but also unconscious. He finally got her awake and said we had to get her to a doctor. She could die of alcohol poisoning. I couldn’t watch my best friend die out here. We had to do something.”
“But you didn’t call an ambulance,” I guess.
“No. We didn’t want anyone to know we’d been out here. We thought it would be faster to just take her ourselves. My boyfriend and Tegan got her in the car, and I sat in the back with her and Tegan. We’d already been driving for a while before I realized my boyfriend wasn’t going in the right direction. He wasn’t heading for the hospital. I asked what he was doing and he said he was getting her to someone who would help her. Somewhere that no one would know we had anything to do with.”
“Did you argue with him?” I ask.
“I couldn’t. It wouldn’t have done any good. He was the one driving and he was so adamant. All the emotion left him. I’d never seen him that way. I didn’t know what to do but go along with what he was saying. The whole drive he was telling me that this was the only option. It was the only thing that made sense. We couldn’t let anyone know what actually happened. We would take her to the emergency room and they would find her. “
“What did he think was going to happen when she woke up? Did he think she was just going to say everything was fine and not talk about what happened?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says without hesitation. “The group of us were tight. We promised to protect each other in any way we could. If she did wake up remembering what happened, she would make something up to cover for us. But my boyfriend really believed she had so much to drink she wasn’t going to remember.”
“Where did you take her?” I ask.
“The hospital in Acadia. It’s far enough away we didn’t think anyone would recognize us. We took her into the hospital, put her in a chair in the emergency room waiting room, and left. She wasn’t passed out when we got there. She was only partly awake and incredibly drunk, but she had enough control to sit in the chair when we put her there.”
“Did you get seen by anyone?” I ask. “You must not have been feeling great by that point.”
“Not there. I was feeling dizzy and weak, but my boyfriend didn’t want to stay at the same hospital as Ashley. He thought people might make the connection. So, he took me to another hospital. In the next town over. You can check. I’ll authorize you to look at my medical records,” Allison says.
“What did they do for you there?” I ask. “Didn’t they check you and find out about the baby?”
“I told them I th
ought I had a miscarriage. That I went to the bathroom and there was a lot of blood and clots, and that I felt really sick and weak. They gave me fluids and discharged me. They said they didn’t have to contact my parents if I didn’t want them to, which I obviously didn’t. I threw my discharge papers away before leaving the hospital.
“After that, we went back to Sherando Ridge. We pretended that everything was fine. We figured the next day Ashley would be at home and would call to find out what had happened the night before. We worked out the story of her getting mad at us and leaving, and that we assumed she had just called her parents to come pick her up. It seemed as if it was going to be so easy,” Allison says.
“Until it wasn’t,” I say.
“Until it wasn’t. We realized Ashley didn’t have her backpack. It hadn’t even crossed our minds. So, we decided the next day I would take it to her house and drop it off. I was really expecting that I would show up and her mom would be upset, but say she was inside, sick. Or that maybe even she would come to the door and ask me what happened. When she didn’t, and her mom told me she hadn’t even come back the night before, I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. So I went to Vivian’s house.”
“Misty said you looked as if you were in such a hurry, you were wobbling on your bike. But it was because you were still weak and sore, wasn’t it?”
Allison nods. “Vivian and I talked about it and we decided the best thing to do would be to stick with the same story we’d told to begin with. That we were at the park to go camping, she got mad at us and left. We’d figured she’d called her parents to pick her up because that was always an option for her. Obviously, the police wanted to talk to us and that was what both of us told them. They believed us and that was it.”
