The May Queen Murders

by Sarah Jude

  The mad jingle of warning bells stirred my thoughts.

  The news was sickening. They couldn’t leave Violet’s body out in the field for the scavengers and beetles that morning, not with the afternoon warmth folks expected. So off to Papa’s clinic her remains were taken while waiting for the county folks to do her autopsy tomorrow. The clinic was close enough to the highway that few Glen kind ventured there unless going to town. No one saw anything, heard anything, except for the hillman who’d noticed the door was broken off its hinges as if rage had torn it away.

  Sheriff was gone rounding up his men for a door-to-door search. Not an inch of Glen land would go unexplored. With the hillmen joining Sheriff, Rook and I were alone on the station’s steps. Speaking seemed so wrong. Words might break the stupor falling over us.

  Dead girls, black bones inside a tree, and a letter that revealed a secret.

  Sheriff approached from the road, winded from searching the Glen. “Rook Michael Meriweather, what in God’s good name is goin’ on? What’s this about a body in the woods?”

  The story came out at once, the Entwhistles, Birch Markle’s skeleton, someone faking Birch’s existence.

  Sheriff opened up his station and motioned Rook and me inside. “You need to sit.”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

  “Ivy, darlin’, when you’re told to sit, it’s ’cause someone’s got news you don’t take standing.”

  I didn’t sit. My body was fatigued, and I feared I wouldn’t get up. My mind spiraled in too many directions. I wanted outside in the clear air. I wanted to breathe. Except I couldn’t; what had happened to Heather was still a mystery.

  Sheriff took off his hat. “I made an arrest. Some of my men are bringing him in now. Marsh Freeman killed Heather.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Folks can endure many hardships. You gotta live with your history. You may not need to talk ’bout it. But you gotta live with it. It’s the only way to stop wickedness from happening twice.

  When I came home, the house looked strange with the boards I’d nailed across my window. I’d gone half mad trying to save myself. Sheriff leaned against the counter. The slice of fruit bread my mother had cut when he arrived was untouched, but he took some coffee.

  Papa stood beside the oil lamp, a lit match in his hand. The flame singed his fingers before he seemed to remember the match was burning, and he waved it in a hurry with a muttered curse. Mama took the matches, lit the lamp, and tucked the pack inside her apron. He stared at the lamp’s glow, not moving, until she ushered him to a chair.

  “I knew Timothy’d take it hard.” Sheriff frowned. “Having the past dragged up ain’t easy.”

  I showed him the map of the woods that led to Birch’s body. His forefinger tapped on one word: marsh. “There ain’t marshes back in those woods.”

  “She must have written it down because she knew what he did,” I said.

  Sheriff pursed his lips in thought. “I never suspected anything. All those years ago, your daddy loved Terra MacAvoy. The way Marsh told it, when your daddy didn’t meet Terra, he did. Told her she’d do better setting up house with him. Terra didn’t want him and ran off. He gave her chase down to the river. She slipped and went in the water. By the time Marsh got her out, Terra had drowned. He was scared and left her on the bank.

  “Birch Markle really was mad. He belonged in an institution, and when he got loose and was found beside Terra’s body, you’d make the assumptions other folks did ’bout him killin’ her.”

  Something haunted Sheriff’s face, maybe years of tracking Birch Markle, maybe how wrong not only he but everyone was. “By the looks of that skeleton, I’d say it wasn’t long after Birch disappeared that Marsh found him and put an iron ball in his brain. He helped create that Markle story by screaming and making sure folks caught enough of a glimpse over the years. Until Heather must’ve found out what he’d done.”

  Killed Terra. Murdered his wife’s daughter. Murdered Violet.

  Marsh would’ve murdered me.

  Sheriff sat at the table and spun the tarnished Markle ring I’d given him. “That poor girl. The things folks’ll do to keep secrets hidden. I went over to Marsh’s house earlier to see how Rue’s baby is coming along. He was bandaging his arm and made out like he’d hurt himself, but when I suggested having a doctor check on it, he got all skittish. He tried telling me it was a scrape. Raised my hackles, ’cause I know a bullet wound when I see one. My boy shot him. Hopefully, he’ll tell us where he hid the Crenshaw girl’s body, and that’s one more charge against him.”

  “Did you realize Milo was a Markle when you and Papa fixed his arm?” I asked.

  Sheriff gave a slow nod. “Your daddy did. Marsh had told us he thought Heather was running ’round with some boy. He must’ve realized who she was with and killed her to stop her from telling what really happened to Birch Markle.”

  Not a boy, a girl. Who loved her. Who she couldn’t tell anyone about because of blood, because of fear. Maybe Emmie and Milo told her their mother’s side of the madman’s legend. Who was to say whether Heather’d still be alive if she’d told everyone in the Glen what she knew? Would anyone have believed her?

  Sheriff wandered to the living room, where he stood before my father. I didn’t listen to their murmured voices. Finding out what had happened in the past, how far Marsh had strayed to hide an accident and how it so devastated the present, there was no resolution. Only a hollow sense it could’ve been avoided.

  I tugged off Heather’s necklace and flicked through each collected item that had brought her joy. Things others buried, she uncovered with delight, dusted them off, and strung on her chain. No matter how we covered up the good and bad of what we’d done, of who we were, there’d always be some Heather to stumble upon it and find it remarkable.

  Rook set the box of Heather’s belongings beside the highway for Emmie, the high beams of a truck reflecting off his glasses. I wrapped her necklace within a red scarf and tucked it down amid the other things she’d shared with Emmie. Mary Jane.

  As we made our way back to the Glen, Rook’s hand eased into mine. Unspeakable things weighed on my tongue, yet the silence between us wasn’t full of pressure. It was simple, wind sneaking between oat grass. Heather was right. Love was gory, ugly. She was also right that when you opened up enough, you had someone else’s heart.

  “This is different,” Rook mused.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Being out after dark. Not being afraid.”

  My lips spread. No, I wasn’t afraid. Not of the dark.

  He lowered his face, and I rose on my toes to meet him. His mouth was tender and warm. I was still cold, maybe not as cold as before. A death-touch didn’t wear off. That didn’t mean I had to feel half dead. My fingers combed through Rook’s hair. He cupped my shoulders and kissed me deeper, kissed me in a way I’d remember, even if that prickle in my lips numbed right then. That kiss would linger.

  “What do you think it’ll be like?” I asked once the kiss was over. “When people find out there was never anything in the woods? What’ll they say when they find out Birch Markle was a big lie?”

  Rook surveyed the empty fields, the scarecrows with no crops to oversee. Only torches to light the way and innumerable stars glittering overhead. “It’ll be strange. Relieved, I guess. We’ve never believed anything else.”

  “The way Papa’s talked about it before, families facing scandal leave the Glen.”

  He pushed my hair behind my ear and kissed me there. “Do you wanna go?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t.”

  I hoped it’d be so simple. Hillfolk had a way of remembering the blood spilled by your name, but there needed to be someone who’d get the story right. Who’d get all the stories right and not let them turn into outlandish legends.

  August’s home lay off the dirt road close to this side of the Glen. The Donaghys used the barn for dyeing clothing, which August mostly handled sinc
e his father had taken ill. The clapboard house needed some upkeep, especially for the summer storm season when the hail might come, and it always came.

  “We should tell him,” I said. “Have you seen him since . . . this morning?”

  “He wouldn’t talk,” Rook replied. “He was heading to the barn and ignored me when I called for him, so I came to see you.”

  Telling August that his girlfriend’s killer had been arrested, that her body would be found soon, was delicate. I didn’t want him to hear it from anyone but me. Few folks knew the gravity of the loss he’d endured. He’d been there, a comfort and friend when I needed one. My hope was he wouldn’t turn me away once he learned it was my kin who’d killed Violet. I couldn’t yet explain my grief for her. The friendship was never quite all it could’ve been.

  So much loss.

  Rowan’s Glen needed a good year. All the hopes that’d been pinned to Heather’s crowning as May Queen.

  The glow of a lantern filtered between the planks of the barn. Rook eased open the door, the hinges whining in need of oil. The light in the barn was poor, but a clothesline was hung with a rainbow of drying shirts. The dyes’ bitter odor was strong and burned my nose, as if the Donaghys had added some chemical. Giant glass jugs were filled with dark, reddish-black dye and lined up near the wall. The corks were slimy with whatever boiled plant extracts, perhaps overcooked red cabbage, created that shade.

  “August?” Rook called. “We’ve got some news.”

  A thud echoed from deep within the barn, then footsteps on the stone floor. August’s hand slithered between two dyed skirts. The rims of his eyes were swollen and reddened, maybe from crying, maybe from the fumes.

  “Marsh Freeman was arrested,” I stated, trying to get out the words. “He pretended to be Birch Markle. He killed Heather. And Violet. I’m so sorry.”

  August shuffled back to wherever he’d been working. Rook’s forehead creased. “Ain’t you gonna say something?”

  Nothing. No reply.

  Every step we took brought more of the barn’s back room into view. On shelves built into the wall were dozens of bleached skulls, all with pointed fangs and hollowed eyes, boiled clean to remove the meat. There was an old anatomical drawing framed in my father’s clinic with the same type of skull. Canis lupus familiaris. The domestic dog. Every size skull from the smallest breed to massive working hounds was present, every face on the LOST DOG signs on Papa’s clinic window.

  “A-A-August?”

  I rounded a stall where a horse had once resided. In the pass-through was a long harvester table.

  On which Violet’s body lay.

  The same red-black color sludge as in the jugs congealed in the wounds on her throat. It’s blood. Oh, God.

  August ran his finger along her cheek. “I swore I’d do whatever she wanted. She promised she’d never tell. But she lied. She was gonna tell Sheriff, said things had gone too far.” He glanced to a jar holding a grayish-red hunk of meat and touched his thumb to her lips. “Not like she can talk now.”

  “What the hell have you done?” Rook asked.

  August tapped a dog’s skull beside her head. “You know, Violet liked what I do. I once promised if anything happened, I’d keep her skull. Those police folk from the county, they would have sliced her up. It was wrong. She wouldn’t want anyone but me taking care of her that way. So I took her from the clinic, wrapped her in blankets, put her in a wagon, and brought her here. She knew I was different. I wasn’t some dumb hunter or farmer. After seeing Heather get away with so much, the kinds of things Dahlia used to do, it wasn’t fair. Heather never let Violet join in.”

  The light in the barn slanted, and the stone floor seemed to drop out beneath me. I could fall into the black earth below and never be heard again, no matter how loud I screamed. The heel of my palm pressed between my eyes and steadied me.

  “Y-you killed Heather,” I said.

  August smiled. “She should’ve let you be friends with Violet, but it was always about what Heather wanted, nobody else. Violet took a bottle of her family’s wine. We got the belladonna from Rook’s greenhouse. We had it all figured out. On May Day, Vi got you as far from your cousin as she could, and that gave me a chance to dance with Heather, tell her I wanted to talk to her by the river. I gave her the bad wine. I did all I could to stay true to the Birch Markle story. I felt kinda bad and left you some presents from her necklace. Did you get them?”

  I gulped, everything tilting.

  His face took on a sour expression. “How was I to know Mr. Freeman was pretending to be Birch Markle all these years? Damn May Queens. I didn’t know that he’d go after you. Getting rid of Heather was supposed to make it better for my Vi, but then she went and said she was gonna tell Sheriff what we’d done. I couldn’t let her.” He picked up two withered strips like leather. “Heather’s smile was real pretty, wasn’t it?”

  My mind emptied, focused on the wilted flesh.

  “Run,” Rook shouted, shoving me. “Get my father.”

  I grabbed his wrist, but instead of running with me, he slammed August against the table with such force that it knocked Violet’s arm off the edge. August’s knees hit the ground, yet he pried himself up to kick out his leg and catch Rook in the hip. Rook tumbled backwards, crashed into me, and we landed on the stone floor in a heap of awkward limbs, a tangle of my hair and skirt.

  I lay still, my arm coiled beneath me. Already the pulsing in my forehead from a growing lump made my eyelids heavy.

  “Get up, Ivy,” Rook urged and wrenched me up under my arms. “C’mon. I ain’t leavin’ you here, and we gotta get help.”

  “I’m up,” I said, but my voice was mushy. I blinked and tried to make sense of where I was in the barn—where was the door, where was August? The lantern guttered, dark then light.

  A loud ting, metal singing, broke the silence. Behind Rook, a silhouette rose in the half-light. Tall, cloaked, smelling of old blood and buzzing with flies. August raised his arm. He clutched the handle of a harvesting sickle, the curved blade arching high and ending in a vicious point.

  “Move!” Rook shouted.

  He pushed me forward before the sickle pierced and tore down his back. A scream that vibrated off the stone floor quivered up my legs. He slumped over. His arms sought to grip a post that held up the hayloft but snatched only air. His chest hit one of the massive jugs of blood. It rolled with his weight, glass grinding against stone. Then Rook came to a rest. August yanked out the blade, the force of dislodging metal from meat spattering my face with liquid heat.

  “What part of him do you like best?” August wondered and drew the sickle’s curve behind Rook’s ear. “He’s a good listener, ain’t he?”

  The blade cut down. Something pink and fleshy plopped on the floor. Blood poured from the side of Rook’s head. A moan escaped his mouth, but it was impossible to make out any words, red gushing down his cheek and bubbling over his lips.

  I glanced to the old horse stall. It was hard to make out, but inside, a pole rested near the stall’s door. A shovel? A pitchfork? Hay from God only knew when was scattered on the floor. I edged back from August, who knelt and picked up the outer shell of Rook’s ear, flicking it so it wobbled before he sniffed it. Rook struggled to force himself up, but August slashed the blade across his back again.

  Blood splashed on the ground. Rook’s blood. My throat closed; I was no longer able to scream, cry, wheeze as I breathed. Keeping one eye on August, I stretched my arm around the stall door extending until a cramp seized my shoulder, but still I strained to grasp the pole.

  August smeared his hands in the bloody pool leaking from Rook’s wounds. A weird smile cocked his mouth, then he moved a pail beneath Rook’s head. Plink, plink, plink. He must’ve drained the blood from the dogs and funneled it in to the jugs. As he bent over, entranced by Rook’s redness, I made a grab for the pole.

  “Nnnugh. ” I groaned and hoisted up not the piercing tines of a pitchfork or flat edge of a shovel. Just
a muck rake for cleaning horse shit. Yet two dozen metal tines of the rake scraped the floor to leave pale claw marks. They were sharp. I carried the muck rake as if ready to heave wasted bedding into a bucket, my hold firm and teeth clenched. I had one chance.

  Don’t hold back.

  Run him through.

  The tines on the muck rake didn’t stab flesh. August’s build was too solid, and the rake tore his shirt and gouged his back above his waist. Force meeting a barrier, the halt jarred me and I bounced back, the muck rake dislodged from my hold. He yowled, dropping to one knee before staggering away from Rook’s body. Not allowing him to gather his wits, I reached for the rake and smacked his head. More tearing, this time the tender skin of his face, and blood swam down his cheek and chin.

  Again, I hit him, the rake cutting close to his eye. He fell again and lay still.

  One hand on the rake, I dashed to Rook and hoisted him up. My feet slipped on the blood-slick floor.

  “C-come on! Move!”

  My right foot flew out from beneath me, and I landed on my knees in warm liquid. Thick down my skirt, wetting my legs, I stood again and lifted up under his arms. He was limp.

  Dead weight.

  His muscles had no tone, his face was slack.

  The cold in my head raced to my fingers and toes, a sizzling sensation but caused by ice instead of heat. His shirt was sticky and dark, like a beet with its outer layer peeled off to reveal shining crimson beneath.

  “Rook, you gotta get up.” I shook him, searching his neck for any twitch of his pulse. “Get up!”

  A bristle of his eyelashes. His feet tried to stand only to go dumb. From between blood-drenched lips, he uttered, “Can’t.”

  No. Tears drained down my cheeks. He couldn’t give up. Not when he’d showed me how strong I’d been.

  “You’re with me,” I said. “Take one step.”

  His head lolled. I didn’t think he’d listen, but his foot shuffled forward.

  “Take another step.”