Harrow Lake

by Kat Ellis

  Seriously? “What does any of this have to do with Lorelei?”

  “Your mother was obsessed with Mister Jitters,” Cora says, brightening as she shifts back to her story. “Used to go into the caves looking for him. And Mister Jitters decided to let Lorelei live instead of eating her because she was halfway to becoming a monster, just like him.”

  I don’t like hearing Lorelei described this way, even if she did abandon me and Nolan. Still, I hide my unease from Cora. “A monster, huh?” I say flatly. “No way.”

  “You don’t understand,” Cora tells me. “Don’t you know how your mom got the part in Nightjar?”

  Oh, FFS. “There was no ‘casting couch’ involved, if that’s what you—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Cora hurries on, probably sensing my fraying temper. “But you know there was another actress who was supposed to play Little Bird first, right?”

  I eye Cora warily. I do know this. Faith Knight was the actress originally cast in the role, and she came to Harrow Lake with Nolan and the crew from LA. The official line was that she quit a few days in because she was homesick, but Nolan once told me it was actually because Faith felt she was too important to sleep in a trailer like the rest of the cast and crew. I don’t see how any of this explains Lorelei being a monster, though. “So what?”

  “So Faith Knight quit because she kept hearing noises outside her trailer.”

  “What kind of noises?”

  “Like fingers tapping against the metal side of the trailer, and teeth chattering outside her window. The sounds Mister Jitters makes, see? And on her last night in Harrow Lake, Faith looked out and saw someone standing there.” Cora raises one eyebrow and glances pointedly at the puppet in its glass case.

  I fight the urge to slow-blink at her. “You’re suggesting she saw Mister Jitters?”

  Cora nods. “And she got so scared she left town the next morning. So your father held an open audition here to find a new Little Bird. Three local girls were in the running, and after they’d auditioned your dad told them to come back the next day for his decision.”

  I nod, familiar with this part of the story. “And he chose Lorelei.”

  “He did. But the weird thing was that the other two girls never even showed up to hear the casting.”

  “Because it was obvious Lorelei would get the part?”

  Cora shakes her head. “Because they’d both disappeared in the night. Two girls, living in two different houses, vanished without a trace. And they were never seen again.”

  “Maybe they ran away together.”

  “Maybe,” Cora says, but not like she’s agreeing with me. I think I’m starting to see where she’s going with this.

  “Are you trying to say Lorelei got rid of her competition? Why would she need to do that?”

  Cora shrugs. “Everyone around here says she went to the caves and asked Mister Jitters to take the other Little Birds. See, Nightjar was her ticket out of this place, and I don’t think she could risk anyone taking it from her.”

  I see a flash of my mother in a scene from Nightjar where Little Bird enters the caves to escape the angry mob chasing her. I slow it down, imagine her calling out to a monster in that quiet blackness.

  Stop it, Lola.

  “That’s horseshit,” I tell Cora.

  “Maybe it is. Maybe those girls disappearing had nothing to do with your mother. Maybe it was just this place. But that’s what everyone around here believes: Your mother was only a step away from becoming a monster.” Cora shrugs. “I thought you’d want to know, just in case you get a weird vibe from anyone. Harrow Lake might not be as friendly as you expected.”

  Now I do roll my eyes. “Sounds like the people in this town have some pretty messed-up ideas.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Cora says. The calmness of her voice makes me pause. There’s a faraway look in her eyes as she stares at the glass case holding the puppet, and it pricks my skin with goose bumps. “Harrow Lake never really recovered after the landslide swallowed half the town; it died, the way Drown Town did, even if nobody here will say it out loud. And dead things don’t move on. They decay.” I try to read her expression to see what she’s hoping to gain from this outpouring, but her gaze is bleak when she meets my eyes. “I wouldn’t stick around here too long if I were you.”

  “Are you trying to freak me out so you can tell everyone what a wuss Nolan Nox’s daughter is? Is that it—you want me to cry and run away because of some backwoods bullshit you just plucked out of your ass?”

  “I wasn’t trying to scare you,” Cora says, unfazed. “I just figured you deserve to know what goes on in this town. You know, seeing as your mom clearly didn’t tell you anything about it.”

  Didn’t she?

  The puppet in the cabinet twitches, then stands up on its haunches again. Cora’s hands aren’t on the controls now. It looks like it just woke up.

  “How did you do that?” I ask.

  Cora looks to the cabinet, then back at me. “Do what?”

  The Mister Jitters puppet is advancing toward the glass. Its sticklike limbs move in sharp jerks. But the strings are slack; I can’t see how she’s doing it.

  The puppet raises a hand to tap on the glass with its long, needle-like fingers.

  “That!” I point at it, unable to tear my eyes away. The hair on my arms rises, as though those sharp fingers are touching me.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap-TAP.

  The sound grows louder, faster. I’m sure the glass is going to shatter.

  “How the hell are you doing that? Stop it!”

  “What can you see?” Cora says. There’s something hungry about her, like a vulture. She steps toward me, but I back away.

  Panic thrums beneath my skin, inside my skull. I have to get out.

  “Lola, wait!” Cora calls after me. “What did you see? What did you see?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Things I know about monsters:

  They aren’t real.

  Where fictional monsters are concerned, there are many kinds. You have your mainstream monster breeds, which can either be friendly or not, depending on the writer’s mood, like zombies, werewolves, vampires, etc. One-offs, like Slender Man, Pennywise, the Babadook, and so on. Then you have your alien monsters like the Alien aliens or the nocturnal creatures from Pitch Black, to more sentient killers, as in Predator. There are also monsters that exist only in small pockets, belonging to towns or cultures as part of their own mythology, like Mister Jitters. (Do people tell stories about him in other towns, or just in Harrow Lake? I miss Google.)

  Not one monster has ever appeared in any of Nolan’s films. He says you don’t need monsters to create fear.

  My mother believed in monsters. At least, I think she did. But what do I know about my mother, really?

  * * *

  • • •

  By the time I reach the fairground, I’ve realized it must’ve been a prank. The puppet probably had some automatic setting that made it move on its own. That tapping sound could easily have been the old mechanism working, I guess. Or maybe Cora wasn’t trying to screw with me at all, and I just overreacted. I wish I had the scene recorded so I could watch it over. Like Nolan says, the camera shows only the truth.

  The sign above the fairground entrance reads NIGHTJAR TOWN FAIR, just like in the film. Nolan has said in interviews that the fairground was pretty much the only thing he had to build in Harrow Lake. And it’s still here, a shrine.

  The big town fair scene, the one everyone remembers, is near the end of the movie. All the townspeople have gone mad with hunger, and they’re chasing Little Bird with knives and clubs, ready to punish her for bringing down a curse on the town with her “flirtatious ways.” But Little Bird escapes through the underground gondola ride at the back of the fair, stumbling through tun
nels in the dark until she finds the way out.

  Should I go in? The Easy Diner should be next, if I’m going in order—that would be the Optimal thing to do. But it’s way behind me now, somewhere in the center of town. The fairground’s right here. It wouldn’t make sense to walk away now without going in.

  As I cross the threshold, I have the strangest feeling—like I’m acting out something I saw in a dream. A sure sign I’ve watched Nightjar way too many times.

  Beyond the gate, a breeze swirls leaves around the lot. It must be mid-morning by now, but the place looks abandoned. I step forward, half certain the iron gate will clang shut behind me, but it doesn’t.

  The rides are as well preserved as the rest of this town. A faint smell of sugar and candy apples even clings to the air, along with an undertone of gasoline and a sharp, metallic scent. I wander on past a Ferris wheel that looms like an enormous cobweb over one corner of the lot. Near it sits a carousel painted in pastel colors. There are no horses on the carousel, as you might expect—only dogs. Teeth bared and eyes gleaming, they chase each other in a weird parody of a hunt. That was Nolan’s idea. He said the dogs’ appearance in the early fairground scene foreshadowed the villagers turning into pack animals when they hunted Little Bird later in the movie. I’m not sure anyone really picked up on that, but I know Nolan likes that it’s there. I like it, too.

  I pass a covered whack-a-mole and a strength-tester game, then reach the wooden gate for the Rickety Railroad roller coaster. I push it open, but hesitate.

  The first and only time I ever went to a fair was on my fifth birthday. Nolan and Lorelei were both there along with a small cluster of pre-vetted kids belonging to Nolan’s business friends. Nolan and Lorelei were fighting. I couldn’t hear what about. Lorelei kept trying to smile, but Nolan has never been good at hiding his temper.

  “You are not taking my daughter on a goddamn roller coaster! Look at her—she’s terrified!”

  “Stop planting seeds of fear in her mind, Nolan,” Lorelei said. She spoke quietly, but Nolan brushed her aside and came over to me, picking me up and carrying me toward the park exit. I can still feel the absolute giddiness of being so high up on his shoulders, knowing I was totally safe with him holding me.

  I cling to that feeling as I let the gate to the Rickety Railroad swing shut. There’s another ride nearby called The Harrowing. It didn’t feature in Nightjar, but it looks like some kind of ghost train. There are no carts waiting for riders, though. The empty rails lead through open doors into darkness. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick look inside. I check that nobody is around, then climb up the steps and follow the track.

  Trees are painted onto black walls, simulating a wood with glow-in-the-dark paint highlighting where the “moonlight” hits their branches. Aside from a few tiny specks of daylight coming through holes in the ceiling, the luminous paint is the only light in here. It’s barely enough for me to make out the metallic sheen of the rails on the floor. I keep going, pushing open another set of doors and almost peeing myself when an owl drops from above my head and hoots loudly in my face. I shove the owl aside, letting it swing on its tether. It hoots manically for a few more seconds before it shuts off.

  A faint tang of smoke hits me as I round a bend in the track. There’s a mural painted on the wall facing me—a mural of flames. Torches, actually. They’re held by the villagers of Nightjar, depicted during one of the later scenes in the movie when they went hunting for Little Bird. The fake smoke smells kind of meaty here. Maybe that’s why the villagers look so hungry.

  I’m about to move on when something brushes my cheek. I shriek and slap it away, but it’s just cloth. Loose fabric hanging down from the ceiling. My swat has yanked a corner loose, and it falls crookedly aside. There’s another part of the mural behind it.

  Here the painted villagers are bigger, closer. Bared teeth, eyes narrowed in anger, and fists clenched around burning torches. But that isn’t the worst part.

  There’s a space in it, right in the center, where there are deep gouges like claw marks, leaving the pale wood exposed underneath. From the size and shape, it must have been the head and shoulders of a person.

  I know this scene from the movie. Know who that person must be.

  But why would someone do this to Little Bird? Why would they erase her from the scene?

  Get rid of her . . .

  I drop the hanging cloth and back away.

  Who did that to my mother? Those marks in the wood weren’t made lightly.

  I wish I knew who made them—who hates her that much. It could be anyone in this town. Anyone, or everyone.

  I emerge back into daylight, feeling disoriented. A poster on the side of a cotton-candy cart near the chain-link fence advertises next week’s parade, and Lorelei’s face beams out at me from the center of it.

  She is everywhere in this town.

  I glance back. There’s nobody there, of course, only the exit door of The Harrowing hanging open as I left it. Still, I feel like I’m being watched. It’s just this place, I guess. So many things here are just a little too familiar. It’s making me feel off balance.

  There’s a flicker in my peripheral vision. Something is moving on the other side of the chain-link fence surrounding the fairground. Trees huddle in close to the perimeter, but there’s no breeze to move them now.

  There—again. Just a darting shadow, but I definitely saw it. I step toward the fence. A girl flits between the trees. Is that the same girl I saw in the woods outside Grandmother’s house? It’s impossible to tell, as I didn’t get a clear look at her, but something about this girl is definitely familiar. My skin prickles.

  I look closer. Then someone appears on the other side of the fence, and I jerk back. It’s Cora. She’s smoking a cigarette.

  “There you are,” she says cheerfully, like we’ve been playing hide-and-seek. “I thought I saw you heading in there.”

  “What do you want?” My tone is harsh, I know, but it doesn’t faze Cora.

  “I wanted to make sure you’re all right. I mean, you left the museum in such a hurry . . . I guess I hit a raw nerve with all that Mister Jitters stuff.” She waves her hand. “They’re just stories.”

  It’s not an apology, but I wouldn’t want one anyway. Nolan believes people hide what they really feel behind sorry and thank you.

  Cora holds up her cigarette. “Want a drag? Call it a peace offering. But watch out for the fence.”

  “The fence?”

  She stoops to pick up a stone and tosses it at the chain links between us. A shower of sparks sprays off where the stone hit and I jump back.

  “The power stays on all the time when the fair is closed. It’s meant to keep people out, but I guess it didn’t stop you.” She gives me a look I think is meant to be stern. “You know you’re trespassing, right?”

  “I didn’t see any . . .” The words are still fresh on my tongue when I spot a big yellow hazard sign near the fairground entrance. “Oh.”

  “You’d better be careful nobody else catches you poking around in there,” Cora says. She holds out her peace offering again, steady-handed despite how close she is to the fence. This girl has nerve. I like that. But why is there even an electric fence here? It’s not like someone could break in and steal the Ferris wheel. “Thanks for the warning, but I’ll pass on the cigarette.” I smile to let her know I’m not being salty. “I guess I’m a little jumpy.”

  “You really are,” Cora agrees. “But you’ll get used to the weird things that go on in this town.”

  Three days, max. “I won’t be here long enough for that,” I admit.

  Cora waves her hand in a so what gesture. “This place will get to you, one way or another. It always does.” I’m not sure what that means, but before I can ask, her eyes go wide at the sight of something behind me.

  She tosses her cigarette into the grass an
d quickly wafts away her last lungful of smoke. I turn to see what’s spooked her, and bump into a chest.

  “Whoa there,” the guy attached to it says.

  He looks a little older than me. Square-jawed, broad-shouldered, and tanned, with hair just long enough to tie back. He’s basically a poster boy for good old-fashioned outdoor living. But it’s his eyes that really stand out: They’re a striking hazel. I’d suspect he wore colored contacts if that didn’t seem so unlikely in this time-capsule town. I stare. So does he.

  “You shouldn’t be in here,” he says. “The fairground isn’t open ’til after the summer parade next week. And you for sure shouldn’t be getting up close to that fence—it’s dangerous.” The guy freezes when he spots Cora inching away as though she might dissolve into the trees. “Jesus, Cora! Shouldn’t you be working your shift at the diner? And is that . . . have you been smoking again?”

  Cora growls in irritation. “Get lost, Carter. Hadfield sent me out to pick up some more bread rolls from Mrs. McCabe’s.” I’m surprised to hear her mention my grandmother until I remember all that food in the kitchen this morning, and that awful sickly smell. “I just took a quick detour when I spotted Lola. Thought I ought to warn her about the fence before she went and got herself electrocuted.”

  “Oh, sure. The way to the McCabe place doesn’t bring you anywhere near the fairground. You need to keep this job, Cora. We need you to keep this job.”

  All the fight goes out of Cora at these words, and it’s almost distressing to watch.

  “I should go,” I say, but Carter’s hand is suddenly on my arm. I try to pull away, but he’s too busy eyeing Cora to notice.

  “Go back to work,” he says to her with a jerk of his chin, and she saunters off.