Harrow Lake

by Kat Ellis

  Still gripping my arm, Carter ushers me back along the main thoroughfare in the direction of the front gate. I dig in my heels, forcing him to stop.

  “You know, I heard about this guy who came out of his house early one morning and found a girl in the middle of his lawn. Just sitting there, hunched over under a blanket with her back to him,” I say. “He called out to her, ‘Hey, what are you doing on my lawn?’ but she didn’t answer. So he went over to her and grabbed her shoulder, because she’s just a girl, right? What was she going to do about it? But then the girl turned around and it wasn’t a girl at all, but a coyote someone had fixed to the guy’s lawn on a rope. The coyote bit off two of the guy’s fingers.”

  I look pointedly at where Carter’s hand is clamped around my arm, and suddenly it’s not anymore. I don’t think he knows whether to laugh or call for help.

  “I’ll take better care where I lay my hands,” he says at last. “Wouldn’t want to tangle with a coyote.”

  “Or with someone who’d leave one tied to your lawn.”

  He laughs. “You’re kinda kooky, aren’t you?” he says with a smile I don’t return. “I’m guessing you’re Lola? I ran into Cora leaving the museum earlier and she told me she’d met you.”

  “Are you her brother?”

  He holds out his hand. “Carter Lahey,” he says. His handshake is firm. “Hey, I’m sorry to hustle you out, but it isn’t exactly safe for you to be wandering around in here . . .”

  “I was only taking a look.” I have every right to be here. Nolan brought the fair to Harrow Lake in the first place.

  “You’re staying with Mrs. McCabe, right? My uncle told me you’re visiting,” he says. “Uncle Grant? You met him when you first got here. He’s fixing one of the go-carts over there.” He gestures toward an empty go-cart track, but I don’t see Grant.

  “He works here?”

  “So do I. At least, until I can find something more permanent,” Carter says. “There aren’t a whole heap of jobs going around here. But it gets busy in town during festival week, so . . .”

  He has Grant’s habit of talking too much, if nothing else. So does Cora, now that I think about it.

  “Do you know what happened to the mural inside The Harrowing?” I say. Carter follows my gaze to the door hanging open where I ran out.

  “Oh, you mean the one with the torches? I guess you saw the part where your mom . . . yeah. I wouldn’t read too much into that.” Carter’s expression dips into something like sympathy, and I have to look away before I give in to the urge to punch him. “It happened years ago. Would’ve had it redone, but my dad was the one who painted the mural and he’s . . . not around anymore, so it just kinda got covered up. To be honest, I’d forgotten all about it.”

  “Whatever. I just wondered.”

  We’re almost at the main entrance when I spot the girl again, up ahead. For a moment, I think it’s Cora, but this girl isn’t wearing a shirt and pants, but a dress like mine. She swings on the open gate like she’s been waiting for me, but as soon as she spots us she hops down and takes off along the road, her hair whipping the air behind her. I scowl after her. There’s something so familiar about her. Again I wonder if she’s the same person I saw last night outside my window. I can’t tell.

  “Are you all right?” Carter says.

  “I saw someone . . .” But the gate isn’t swinging now. There’s no sign of her.

  Who the hell is she?

  Maybe it’s some Nightjar fan who’s decided to follow me around while I’m here, but she’s really starting to creep me out.

  Carter scans the empty road, and suddenly I wish I’d kept my mouth shut.

  “Anyway, I should go.” I hurry through the gate and past the sign for the Nightjar Town Fair without looking back. The gates shut with a clang behind me.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Cora is coming down the porch steps when I arrive back at Grandmother’s house. She carries a large basket full of bread on one arm. It looks old-fashioned and uncomfortable, like most things in this town.

  “He let you go, then?” Cora says, shifting the basket from one arm to the other. A batch loaf tumbles out as she does so, and Cora deftly snatches it up, brushes it off against her pant leg, and puts it back in the basket.

  “Who let me go?”

  “My brother,” she says with a wry smile. “He talks more than I do once he gets going.”

  I don’t disagree. But my mind is getting tangled with everything I’ve seen and heard today; stories of monsters, dancing puppets, vandalized portraits of my mother, and the elusive girl I keep seeing. I feel like I know her.

  You “feel” it? Nolan snaps. Only people who lack intelligence rely on feelings.

  “Cora, do you know a girl around our age who might be following me around? I think I saw her outside my window last night, and again at the fairground.”

  “What does she look like?”

  I try to list only the facts I’m certain of, Nolan’s words still ringing in my head. “She wore a dress, and her hair was long. Fair hair and skin, I think.”

  Cora raises one eyebrow. “You saw her when you were looking out of your bedroom window, and again at the fairground? Let me guess—in the hall of mirrors.”

  It takes me a second to realize what she’s suggesting. “It wasn’t me,” I snap. “The girl was outside my window. And then she was swinging on the fairground gate. I was not looking at my own damned reflection!”

  She raises her free hand and laughs. “Just a thought. In that case, you pretty much described half the girls in Harrow Lake when they’re dressed for the festival. If you’re worried about it—”

  “I’m not worried,” I cut in, forcing an even tone. Raising my voice in front of a stranger is not Optimal. “I’m not even sure it was the same girl I saw both times.”

  “Well, okay. But if you see her following you again, don’t keep it to yourself. People do some weird shit in this town.”

  “Like dressing up in clothes from a century ago?” I deadpan. But Cora doesn’t laugh; she’s staring off down the lane.

  “Everyone here’s just so—I dunno. Maybe there’s something bad in the water . . .” She musters a cardboard smile. “Speaking of which, you should come down to the lake at sunset. I’ll be there with my friends—Faye, who you met this morning at Mr. Bryn’s, and her sister, Jess. I’ve got a couple bottles of the red-eye my mom makes. It tastes like ass, but it gets the job done. You can hang out with us, if you like.”

  They always want something from you, Lola.

  But I pause midway through shaking my head. I only have two more days in Harrow Lake, and Nolan isn’t here to say no. What would it be like to hang out with other teenagers?

  “I’ll think about it,” I say.

  “Perfect,” Cora says, apparently taking that as a yes. “And don’t tell your grandmother about the dropped loaf, will you? She’d tell Hadfield for sure, and I’m already on my final warning.”

  She heaves the bread basket onto her hip and takes off without waiting for me to agree.

  Cora and I now share a secret. I tuck away a smile before going back inside the house. Scribble a note about Cora’s dropped bread and slide it neatly between a gap in my bedroom floorboards.

  I keep my secrets safe.

  * * *

  • • •

  The jitterbugs are all closed again. Grandmother must have done it. It’s not enough that I’m stuck here with none of my own stuff—she needs to take away even the illusion that I have any privacy.

  I check the room, looking for anything else that might’ve moved or gone missing. Everything looks the same, but, when I’m rifling through Lorelei’s shoes at the bottom of the closet, I come across a yellow-edged copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Was this always here?

  It’s like finding an old friend. I open the
cover and the smell of aged paper wafts out. I miss my own room, filled with normal bookcases and hundreds of books, floor to ceiling on each wall. Horror, mostly. Even though Nolan likes to speed-read them before I’m done and tell me all the points where the author went wrong.

  At home, I read all the time, and watch movies over and over again. Getting lost for hours inside heads that aren’t my own. Unless Nolan wants me to go with him to some event or party or whatever, where I get lost in my own head while I smile and say clever things to impress his rivals.

  I’m thumbing through Alice when a scrap of paper flutters out from between the pages and lands at my feet. It’s a note, in tiny, jumbled handwriting. A child’s handwriting.

  I told the teacher about Grant cheating in class today. Daddy says I’m not to tattle, or Mister Jitters will come get me.

  I would know who wrote it even if I weren’t standing in her bedroom. Lorelei was the one who taught me about keeping secrets. When they get too big to hold in, the best thing to do is to write them on scraps of paper—just get them out. I hide them where nobody else will ever find them, so my secrets exist outside of me, and I don’t have to carry the weight of them inside my head. I’ve been doing the same thing since I was old enough to write.

  I run my finger over the words and think about Lorelei’s father in the photograph above the fireplace. He looked so serious and grave. Why would he tell Lorelei a thing like that—that a monster would get her? Nolan would never say something like that to me. I put the secret back where I found it.

  There is nothing else remarkable at all in Lorelei’s old room, except for the shelves full of jitterbugs, and the wallpaper that has curled back on itself again high in the corner of the room. There’s no ignoring it, so I climb onto the bed and try to flatten the slightly damp paper back into place, but just as I’m at full stretch, my ankle wobbles on the mattress and I lose my balance. My fingers close around the frayed edge of the paper as I fall, and with a swift tearing sound I land on the bed with the whole sheet of wallpaper draped over me.

  “Damn it!”

  I look up to inspect the damage. Maybe I can fix it before Grandmother sees. I really don’t want to have to tell her I’ve torn down her ugly wallpaper.

  The exposed underneath layer is just the same as the one I’ve torn down—that same deco-ish beetle pattern that makes my eyes blur.

  Except now I can see that the pattern underneath isn’t quite the same. Someone has drawn scratchy figures all over the beetle design. Crooked and sticklike with backward-bending legs . . . No, it’s only one figure. Repeated over and over again.

  Mister Jitters.

  I edge away from the bed, trying to take in all the drawings. There are dozens of them just on the section I’ve exposed.

  Mister Jitters will come get me . . .

  I grope blindly for the door handle and catch one of the shelves behind me with my elbow. Pain lances up my arm. One of the nutshells now lies open on its side where I’ve knocked it. The little bug legs waggle in distress, making that skittering sound again. I snap the lid shut, but I can still hear it. If anything, it’s louder. Covering the shell with my hand doesn’t stifle it. I don’t know what else to do.

  The chattering doesn’t stop; instead, it takes on an irregular extra rhythm, like a quarter-beat filling in the gaps, and then another. The noise is swelling. It can’t be, but it is. It is.

  I back away from the shelf until I bump against the door. It’s not just coming from that one jitterbug. It’s all of them now. They’re all making that same chattering sound through their closed shells. It builds like rain beating against a window, like a hundred sets of teeth rattling. It’s as if all those stick figures on the walls have woken up, their jerky, staccato footsteps dancing across the paper . . .

  Tap-tap-tap-tap-TAP!

  “Stop it!”

  Covering my ears, I stumble out onto the landing. But the moment the door closes the sound stops. I wait a moment, watching dust motes winnow in the last rays of sun coming in through the window in the stairwell. Still nothing. I press my ear against the wooden door.

  I try to conjure Nolan’s voice telling me to calm down, that it was nothing—it wasn’t real. For once, he’s silent. I can’t even picture his face for a second, and that’s almost as terrifying as the sound I just heard.

  Slowly, my hand shaking, I turn the doorknob. The jitterbugs are quiet. Everything is normal. Well, as normal as it was before. The torn wallpaper still lies draped across the bed.

  What the hell just happened? Am I imagining things, or is someone screwing with me? Whatever the answer is, there’s no way I can be in this house right now.

  In the downstairs hallway, I pause as I pass the telephone. I so need to hear Nolan’s steady voice right now. To have him tell me there’s nothing to worry about, that he wants me to come home and not stay in this screwed-up place. I lift the receiver and listen for the dial tone. It doesn’t come. Pressing the switch hook doesn’t work: it’s dead. I’m just replacing the receiver when a bony hand grabs my wrist.

  I shriek, knocking the phone off its hook with a clatter.

  “Clumsy girl!” Grandmother snaps. I jerk free of her hold.

  “You scared me.” In the dim light of the hallway, she is barely more than a floating white head above the black vacuum of her dress.

  “Who were you calling at this hour, anyway?”

  “Nolan, of course. And it’s only four o’clock!”

  “Nolan, of course,” she mocks. “And tomorrow it will be some other man, and another the day after. When will you stop parading yourself in front of them and embarrassing your father and me?”

  “I . . . Embarrassing . . . ?” I have no idea what she’s talking about. The only man I ever call is Nolan.

  “You need to have some respect, Lorelei. For yourself, and for this family!”

  Oh.

  Ohhhh.

  “But . . . Grandmother, I’m not Lorelei.” I watch as her eyes narrow to dark slits. “You do know that, right?”

  She steps away from me. Her hands wring together in front of her, two pale moths feeling their way blindly. “I know that,” she says softly. “Of course I do. It was just the shadows—too many shadows in this house . . .”

  And with that she hurries up the stairs. A door slams a moment later, leaving me alone with only a dead phone for company.

  * * *

  • • •

  Just before sunset, I head out to meet Cora. I cross the yard and hardly notice the figure standing outside until I practically walk into him. Jerking back with a yelp, I’m relieved to see it’s just Grant. Then I notice the cage in his hand.

  “You’re in an awful hurry, sweetpea,” he says. All I can do is stare at the empty cage, my mouth gone dry. It takes him a moment to read my silence. “I’m just setting some traps for your grandma.” Grant shifts, leaning the wire trap against his leg. He looks the part of the old-timey backwoods boy, leering at me and leaning on a tree stump.

  “What exactly are you hoping to catch?” The cage is about the size of a large shoebox and, judging by the lack of blades or razor wire, isn’t meant to kill its victims.

  “Rats,” Grant says, and grins when I make a face. “Your grandma’s worried they’ll get into her baking.” He shrugs. “And a pal of mine gives the rats I catch to his dogs to play with. Keeps ’em keen.”

  “Lovely,” I say, even as my mouth fills with a sour taste.

  “I wanted to come visit, anyhow—to see how you’re settling in. Carter was worried he didn’t make a good first impression on you at the fairground earlier.”

  “Oh, yes. I’d almost forgotten,” I say.

  Grant snickers. “Don’t tell the boy that. I reckon it’d bruise his ego up good to hear you forgot you even met him.”

  I frown, uncertain. Grant shakes his head like I’m miss
ing something obvious.

  “Carter falls in and out of love at least once a week. I reckon a sweet treat like you caught his attention all right.” Now he laughs loudly, like he’s just cracked an amazing joke.

  I can’t handle this right now.

  “I don’t suppose you know what happened to my suitcase, do you?” I say.

  Grant’s brow furrows at my graceless shift in topic. “Your suitcase?”

  “You took it upstairs for me when I arrived, but I can’t find it and Grandmother says she has no idea where it went. It has all my things in it, all my clothes, and I’m leaving soon.”

  As soon as I can get out of this place, I’m gone.

  “I took it upstairs? Well then, maybe your grandma moved it out of the way and forgot?” Grant says. “Put it in one of the other rooms?”

  “No. She looked for it. It’s not there.”

  His eyebrows crawl up his forehead, creasing it into deep ruts. “I don’t know what to tell you. I’m sure it’ll turn up.”

  For all I know, he’s spent the last day wearing my underwear.

  “Did you do something to upset her?” Grant asks suddenly.

  “Who?”

  “Your grandma.” I don’t answer, but apparently I don’t have to. “Yeah, I thought so. She used to do that with Lorelei sometimes, you know—take away her stuff to teach her a lesson. You might try telling her you’re sorry for whatever you did.”

  I think of her weeping in the kitchen; throwing out the breakfast she made for me. Of the jitterbug I stole. My questions about Lorelei. The torn wallpaper I haven’t even told her about yet. The way she acted just now while I was trying to make a call. There are a dozen little things I’ve done that have upset my grandmother since I arrived in Harrow Lake. Without even trying.

  Still, it’d be really petty of her to hide my stuff just for being a tiny bit of an asshole. But then I think about how she called me Lorelei just now; maybe she thought she was punishing Lorelei and then completely forgot.