The Nightmare Girl

by Jonathan Janz

  “I know that. And St. John’s Eve is the twenty-third. It’s the night of bonfires.”

  Joe lapsed into silence, and Sadie continued. “Edwin Baxter was gone, of course. Not that it would have made a difference anyway. Man was as ineffectual as a castrated bull, and like I said, folks had begun to think he was part of it. That his litigation was what kept the cult members out of jail.”

  She started toward the declivity at the rear of the yard, the place where the grass first became sparse, then gave way entirely to underbrush, bare soil, and the exposed roots of old growth trees. “But they all came. And they conducted their ceremony.”

  “What sort of ceremony?”

  Sadie shook her head distractedly. “Who knows? Most of the ones who were there were never subpoenaed. The ones who were wouldn’t say a word about it. But that morning Antonia’s kids were seen in town with their mother. By the next morning, the only thing left of them was ashes.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  Sadie didn’t answer, nor did she chide him for the obviousness of his statement. They proceeded through the increasingly overgrown yard in silence. Joe worried Sadie would trip and injure herself. But the older woman moved as easily through the brambles as she had through the mown grass, exhibiting a grace he couldn’t help but admire.

  “Was Antonia arrested?” he asked.

  Sadie shook her head.

  Joe heard his voice rise. “How is that possible? Even if the sheriff was part of her group…one of her lovers…how could she get away with that?”

  “I didn’t say she got away with it. I just said she wasn’t arrested. Watch your step here,” she said when they came to a small washout. Stepping down over the foot-high dropoff gingerly, she said, “There were several complaints that night about the collection of strange individuals who’d shown up at the Baxter house. Remember that even then your neighborhood was one of the prettiest in the northern half of Indiana. So word did eventually reach the state police, who sent an officer over to investigate.

  “The man—I’ve long since forgotten the officer’s name—he knocked on the door and was met by one of the cult members. This person, whoever he was, apparently got irate with the officer and started threatening him. The state policeman called for backup. There were three cars parked out front of Antonia’s house when Antonia herself appeared on the front stoop.”

  Sadie stopped, only a little bit winded, and gazed down the gradually falling valley. “I wasn’t there, of course. After all, I was only ten, and I didn’t live in that neighborhood. And I wasn’t in their sect. But several neighbors had come out to witness the scene, and their accounts dovetailed enough for me to believe the story isn’t apocryphal.

  “Antonia was soaking wet. She was nude, too. I suppose I should mention that. The men, they sort of shifted on their feet and averted their eyes like shamefaced schoolchildren, but Antonia just beamed at them like being wet and naked was the most natural thing in the world.”

  “It is natural, I suppose.”

  “Not when you’re covered in gasoline.”

  Joe’s face went slack.

  Sadie nodded. “The odor hit them after just a few seconds. By the time they realized what was happening, Antonia was striking a match—don’t ask me where she’d hidden it—and holding the flame to one breast.”

  “Oh hell.”

  Sadie sighed. “She went up like a goddamned candle.”

  Joe swallowed, was speechless for a long moment. Then he said, “Holy crap.”

  “That sums it up pretty nicely.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “Bedlam. They tried to put her out, but they were state troopers, not firemen. The neighbors said whatever people were still at the Baxter House emptied out the back door and made off while the cops tried to put Antonia out.”

  There was a sour, corrosive taste in Joe’s mouth. “Did they?”

  “Not before she was roasted down to an unrecognizable twist of charred flesh and smoking gristle.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Familiar too, huh?”

  Joe could feel his heart slamming in his chest, like some poorly calibrated machine that was on the brink of tearing loose and spinning out of control. “What do you think the connection is?”

  She eyed him with grim humor. “I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out.”

  “Sadie, it’d be nice if you’d just tell me what—”

  “Antonia Baxter was Angie Waltz’s great-grandmother.”

  It was as though someone had doused him with ice water.

  “Which makes Sharon Waltz,” she said, “Antonia’s granddaughter.”

  “Hell,” he said.

  “I thought you’d feel that way. Katherine Waltz was the child Antonia gave up.”

  “Do you think Angie—”

  “Got the idea to burn herself up from her great-grandma?”

  Joe waited.

  Sadie frowned. “The similarities are too great to pass off as coincidence. As for the reasons behind the connection… I guess we’ll never know now that Angie barbecued herself.”

  “What do you think?”

  Sadie glanced toward the valley, her features tough to read from Joe’s angle. “I think she heard the story as a child and probably wondered about her great-grandma’s motives. Antonia was a lot of things, but she was also a strong woman. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she was a role model of sorts for Angie.”

  “But wouldn’t Sharon… I mean, her grandma abandoned her mother. You wouldn’t think she’d paint Antonia in a positive light.”

  Sadie turned to him. “You wouldn’t think a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean they’re not so.”

  Joe thought it over. “Were there any other details about Antonia?”

  “Uh-uh,” Sadie said. “Just that she had a glorious body. And that she was a real redhead.”

  Joe fell silent. He tried not to picture Antonia Baxter’s glistening body going up in flames, but found the image crystalizing in his mind like a news replay on loop. But something was gnawing at him, something Sadie had mentioned earlier…

  “Sadie,” Joe said, peering deeply at her, though she now seemed unwilling to meet his gaze. “There’s more you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

  Her lips twisted in frustration. “Oh, it’s all so damned silly. I’m not like this. Never have been. Superstition is for simpletons, and I have enough to think about without worrying about these dreams.”

  “Tell me the rest of it.”

  Sadie half-turned toward the house, as if eager for sanctuary.

  “You said there was a sound when you woke up,” Joe prompted.

  “I was hoping you’d forget that.”

  “My wife says I have a long memory.”

  “That’s seldom a good thing.”

  “So she tells me.”

  Sadie crossed her arms and massaged her sticklike biceps. She shivered despite the humidity of the day, the closeness of the forest. “Like I told you, I wake up a lot now. Constantly, actually, and that takes some doing considering how hard it is for me to sleep in the first place. But I wake up sometimes and I can tell that Louie hears it too. Harold, he sleeps like a dead thing, but Louie’s getting old like me, and that dog hears everything at night. He—”

  She broke off, pressed a fist to her lips. Joe thought she was stifling a cough, but then realized that Sadie Hawkins was weeping.

  He moved closer, put a hand on her back. Through the white cotton of her shirt, her knobby backbone felt vaguely reptilian. “Sadie…”

  “Don’t take pity on me, Joe. That’ll only make it worse.”

  Joe asked in a soft voice, “What do you hear when you wake up?”

  Sadie’s voice became harsh. “Laughter. It’s always the same. Just this teasing, mocking lau
ghter. It comes from the woods.”

  Joe found himself looking around, then felt a rush of foolishness. It was midday, after all, and it wasn’t as though Sadie had claimed there was a serial killer roaming these woods. Still…the shadows and the trees and the deep silence made him feel like getting back to civilization, and in a hurry.

  “Have you seen anybody poking around back here?”

  She shook her head.

  “Anyone tried to break in?”

  “No,” she said.

  He opened his mouth to question her further, but judging from the look on her face, her thoughts had turned inward.

  Joe sighed. “Sadie, I appreciate you telling me all this—” At her testy look, he said, “I’m not claiming it’s pleasant or anything. In fact, if I’m able to work in that house anymore without jumping at shadows it’ll be a miracle. But at the risk of sounding rude, I’d really like to cut short this hike and get back to my wife and daughter.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Joe. We’re here now anyway.”

  She threw a wordless nod down at the carpet of pine needles and moist humus. Joe felt his windpipe squeeze closed.

  On the ground at the base of a hawthorn tree lay a small, primitive-looking doll, the kind made from cornhusks.

  “It’s a corn dolly,” Sadie said in a toneless voice. “I used to have one when I was a girl. Those clothes look familiar, Joe?”

  Joe didn’t answer, didn’t do anything but stare at the diminutive yellow dress draped over the cornstalks. He remembered his daughter claiming someone had stolen Belle’s dress.

  Sadie said, “I thought you’d recognize it. How would someone have gotten into your house?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I can’t. I can’t any more than I can explain what was in the Waltz girl’s mind when she drenched herself in gasoline and flicked that lighter.”

  “It has to be Sharon,” he said, more to himself. “She’s the only one still alive, she’s the one who hates me.”

  Sadie’s eyes widened, the raw fear in the woman’s expression terrible to behold. “But why does she keep coming out here to torment me? I haven’t done anything to her.”

  “But you know me. You employed me and my men. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe Sharon wants to spread bad word-of-mouth about my work.”

  “Seems a pretty extravagant way to do it.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. But…what other way of getting at me is there?”

  “She could leave a doll in your backyard, terrorize you and your family.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  Sadie’s face crumpled. She drew in quivering breath, composing herself. “That was a cruel, vicious thing to say. I’m sorry.”

  “Sadie—”

  “It’s just this wretched sleeplessness. I’ve never had it this bad before. I feel like I’m cracking up.”

  Joe picked up the corn dolly and regarded it with distaste. Though the silky yellow dress had been on his daughter’s doll until very recently, the fabric now felt oily to the touch. Tainted.

  “You going to take that to Copeland?” Sadie asked.

  “I suppose so, though I don’t know what he can do about it.”

  “Jail that witch on breaking and entering is what he can do.” When Joe looked up at her, she said, “I mean it, Joe. She’s got to let this go. I know what happened to her daughter was a dreadful thing, but it was never anyone’s fault but Angie’s. Or Sharon’s. Or even Antonia’s for giving Sharon’s mother up. But it’s sure as hell not ours.”

  They walked back in silence and had just reached Joe’s truck when he stopped and said, “Back there in the woods.”

  “Yes?”

  “You called Sharon a witch.”

  Sadie’s chin rose, her eyes unblinking. “I did, didn’t I?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Several days later, Joe was working in the Baxter house when he remembered Sadie’s story about Antonia Baxter and her children. Joe was in the living room, which was so big a guy could just about get lost in it. He judged it to be about twenty-by-thirty, the kind of room in which you’d hold a recital.

  Or a pagan ritual.

  Brushing away the thought, Joe moved to the immense hearth and stooped to peer inside. The fireplace was as high as his chest and was easily eight feet wide. As he examined the scorched concrete walls, he told himself he’d find nothing, that the tale of Antonia Baxter incinerating her own kids was the stuff of legends, one of those chain stories that gets wilder and wilder with every retelling.

  Then he spotted the screw holes.

  Oh hell, he thought. There were several pairs of them, each set spaced about three inches apart. If he hadn’t been spooked by the old house before now, gazing at the holes that might have been used for manacles chilled him to the marrow. Jesus God, what kind of a sick person would do that? And what kind of a religion, cult, whatever, would condone the ritualistic burning of innocent children?

  A voice behind him said, “I’m surprised you fit in there.”

  Joe gasped, tried to stand, and smacked the base of his skull against the overhanging hearth. Cursing, he shuffled back a few paces and rubbed his smarting head. A wooden clock that sat atop the mantel wobbled for a moment, then came to rest. Man, he’d knocked his head hard.

  A hand was on his back, soothing him. “I’m sorry, Joe. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  This time he recognized the voice.

  Bridget.

  “It’s fine, Mrs. Martin. I was just lost in my thoughts, I guess.”

  “You do an excellent job,” she said. “I was admiring the grout work in the shower last night.”

  Joe took in her meaningful gaze and looked away, sure he’d turned all kinds of red. He told himself she couldn’t possibly know anything, but her look had been so intent, so playful.

  She’s just flirting with you, he told himself.

  Then he thought, That’s not a whole lot better.

  “It’s in good shape,” he said, nodding toward the fireplace. “None of the cracks are severe. Just the house showing its age.”

  “How old are you, Joe?”

  He looked at her again, saw that same demure look in her eyes. Too old—and too married—for you, he thought.

  “I’m forty-one, Mrs. Martin.”

  “Stop being so formal,” she said, grasping his bicep and giving him a little squeeze. He did his best to ignore the scalding bolts of electricity her touch sent through him, but they registered all the same.

  “Sorry,” he said, forcing a laugh. “Just habit, I guess.”

  When she continued to stare at him in that same penetrating way, he said, “We got the windows installed, but you probably noticed that.”

  “I did. They’ll dampen the sound?”

  He nodded. “They’re top of the line. You’ll hear a few loud noises. Car horns, violent crashes of thunder. But I doubt you’ll hear dogs barking or people talking on the street.”

  “Good. Did you see the bed that arrived last night?”

  Careful, he told himself. “I did. It’s an interesting frame.”

  Her finger traced the plunging neckline of her tight red shirt. “It’s made from hawthorn trees. They’re sacred in some religions.”

  Joe glanced up at the swords that had also shown up since yesterday. They crisscrossed over the mantel, both of them long and apparently razor-sharp. “Those religious artifacts too?”

  “Spiritual might be the better way of phrasing it, but yes. They have a great deal of significance.”

  “They Celtic?”

  “Very good, Mr. Crawford.”

  Joe eyed the swords. “Hope your husband moored them to the walls well enough. I’d hate for one to fall down and decapitate somebody.”

  “Mitch is very careful,” she said. “Sometimes I w
ish he’d loosen up a little.”

  Joe decided not to touch that one. “What about the floors, Mrs. Martin? You never told me what color of stain you all wanted.”

  “I’m not worried about the floors yet,” she said. “Particularly in here. They’ll just get messed up anyway.”

  Joe frowned, wondering if she was talking about him and his men. He took pride in a neat work site and considered saying so. But instead he said, “Have you and your husband decided on any other finishes?”

  “Actually, yes,” she said and paced toward the center of the room. “I was wondering. Do you think it would be hard to put an eyebolt up there?”

  Joe glanced at the ceiling, which was ten feet high. “I don’t see why not.”

  “It would need to support plenty of weight.”

  Joe scratched his cheek. “Why would you put an eyebolt there?”

  In answer, Bridget’s face broke into a lewd grin.

  Oh man, Joe thought. He cleared his throat. “Well, we can certainly install what you need…”

  “We’ll take care of getting the materials,” she said. “Do you think you’ll be able to put it together for us?”

  Joe eyed her for a moment, a fine sheen of sweat breaking out on his forehead. Then he thought, To hell with it.

  “Bridget, are you asking me to install a sex swing for you and your husband?”

  She returned his gaze, unabashed. “Or whoever else wants to try it out.”

  Get out, a voice in his head declared. Get out now, while you’re still ahead. This lady is trouble.

  He said, “Can you get the materials here? Or is there a factory outlet that sells that sort of thing?”

  She started toward him, laughing softly. “You have a good sense of humor, Joe. I have fun with you.”

  Joe took a couple steps toward the fireplace, contrived to examine the mantel he’d installed.

  Bridget followed. Her voice went a little husky, the smell of her—like tangerines and fir trees—surrounded him. “Marriage doesn’t equal death, you know.” Fingertips caressing his shoulder through his denim work shirt. “We’re still adults.”

  He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Adults should know how to behave themselves, Bridget.”