I nodded. “That’d be noteworthy, yes, but there’s no information beyond the caption.”
“Or maybe the body’s still there,” Kitty whispered. I looked at her. We all looked at her, and then we all looked back at the picture. If that was the case, we had some hunting to do.
Jess wanted to spend Friday night climbing around the church. She had the patience of a toddler. Anna was the one who told her we needed a Mary break, that I’d just been stabbed by dead-girl fingernails. I wasn’t convinced it’d get better than this—I’d seen how Cody looked. But a night’s reprieve sounded nice.
Instead of racing to the church, we researched over pizza. There wasn’t a lot of progress, though. Anything we found about Bloody Mary related to variations on the summoning—how people claimed to summon her, the different names associated with her legend. By the time midnight came, we were tired and frustrated and too cheese-inflated to move.
Jess sighed and flopped back to stare at the ceiling. “We should have gone to the church. We need a better lead.”
“Maybe tomorrow?” I asked.
Kitty frowned. “I can’t. My dad’s dragging me to visit my grandparents during the day, and I have plans tomorrow night. You guys can go without me if you want.”
“I’ve got a family cookout tomorrow during the day,” Anna said.
“So let’s go at night,” Jess said.
I didn’t love that idea. If Mary was there in some guise, did we really want to face her in the dark? We were at enough of a disadvantage in the daylight. “Are we sure that’s a good idea? What if she lives there?” I asked.
Jess shook her head. “She’d be cutting up everyone in Solomon’s Folly if she lived there. Why would she bother with the mirrors if she didn’t have to? Besides, we’re better off going at night. Less reflection if there’s less light. The car’s less of an issue that way, too. Plus I doubt the locals want people climbing all over their historical buildings. This gives us a little cover.”
“I hate to admit it, but she’s got a point,” Anna said. “And I can go tomorrow night, but I don’t think we should leave Shauna alone between now and then. We’ve gotten lucky so far—the kids showing up with the car, Mrs. McAllister with the bathroom. But if we leave her on her own, it could get ugly. We should take shifts this weekend.”
“I can help on Sunday during the day,” Kitty offered.
Jess nodded. “Cool. I can take tomorrow day, so Anna’s off the hook with the cookout. But tomorrow night when she gets home, let’s hit the church and see if we can find anything. Sound good, Shauna?”
None of it sounded good. I was happy for the company, of course, but the idea of crawling through a deserted church at night with a monster haunting me wasn’t high on my list of Awesome Things to Do. I was running out of options, though. We’d already tapped the Internet and Cody. We needed more.
“Sure,” I said hesitantly. By Anna’s less-than-enthusiastic expression, she was in accord. Jess was the only one energized by the possibility, but then, she’d been Mary-obsessed since we started.
Which reminded me.
“Hey, I meant to ask you earlier. Why do you keep calling Cody?”
Jess dropped her head, blinked, then shrugged. Her fingers returned to the second Mary letter. She reached behind her back to retrieve her red notebook and jammed the pages inside the top cover.
“Trying to find out if we can put her away for good,” she said. “I have questions. I want to help you.”
“Well, stop. I don’t want to alienate the only other person in the world who survived Mary Worth.” Jess started to say something, but stopped herself, her brow crinkling and her teeth digging into her lower lip. I knew that look. Jess had a secret. We were too far into this Mary thing for her to pull punches now. “What?” I pressed, and she squirmed beside me like a worm on a bait hook.
“There’s one other girl who survived Mary. Well, not a girl anymore, but, like, you know,” she said. “Elsa Samburg. She was haunted in the seventies. She’s still around, but Cody’s more accessible.”
“How do you know that?” Anna demanded.
Jess ran her hand over her mouth nervously. “Aunt Dell mentioned her in passing. It’s not like Elsa would be much help. I don’t know how we could talk to her.”
“Why not?” I asked.
Jess looked away from me, her eyes fixing on the bloodstained SpongeBob T-shirt on the floor. “She’s in a mental hospital. She lost her mind.”
The Elsa Samburg news surprised me, but it shouldn’t have. I’d seen Cody. And I’d had Mary on me for only a few days and I was already questioning my sanity. Mary was perfect paranoia fodder. What I found more alarming was Jess dropping another “Oh, by the way” on us. There were too many of them. If she’d had all this information, why had she ever suggested we summon Mary?
Recklessness, yes. Selfishness, yes. Her worst traits all tied up into one huge, horrible idea that was going to get me killed.
Jess’s motives were on my mind as we huddled into a pile to sleep. We were like puppies—no one was comfortable being alone, so we curled together around our pillows. I could feel Anna’s leg against mine and Kitty’s elbow grazing my arm. Jess stayed out of her room and slept with us on the floor, too. She was so close, I could hear the soft cadence of her breaths.
Sleep eluded me. Part of it was the footsteps in the hall as Jess’s family shuffled around the house before settling down for the night. Part of it was the wind through the trees. Part of it was the howling of a neighborhood cat and the barking of a dog. All of it conspired to keep me awake as long as possible. My last conscious moment was the thought that, yes, Mary could send anyone over the edge.
Mrs. McAllister woke us at nine the next morning with a dozen doughnuts and orange juice. It was way early to be up on a Saturday, but she stepped over our prone bodies to set the food in the middle of the room, like we were a pack of wolves. I pushed myself up to snag breakfast. Anna and Kitty joined me while Jess snored. After we ate, Kitty poked Jess’s shoulder, narrowly avoiding Jess’s morning flails.
“Hey, I’m taking Anna home,” Kitty said. “I’ll talk to you guys later. Good luck at the church.”
Jess grumbled and nodded, her hands sliding down her face to rub the sleep away.
We needed to move out of Todd’s space for the day. Jess came out to the hall with the salt clutched in her hands. “Sit here,” she said. I slumped down onto the floor while she went to anti-ghost her room. She crossed from her bedroom to the linen closet a few times, using sheets to cover the closet’s sliding glass doors. I could hear her moving furniture around before she poked her head out and motioned me in.
The room looked safe enough. The windows were salted. The mirrors were covered or turned toward the walls. She’d even taken her pictures down so there wouldn’t be anything staring at us from the frames. I stepped over a heap of dirty clothes on the floor and flung myself onto the bed. The carnival pony was there and I hugged it to my chest, my chin resting on its fuzzy pink mane. Jess eyed me and smirked, sinking down into her computer chair, the monitor on her desktop covered by a sweatshirt so there was no reflection.
“I’m glad I’ve got you to myself. I had an idea I wanted to run by you without the extra ears.” She paused to think, tilting her head to the side. “It’s not a nice idea, but I have to throw it out there. I don’t want you stuck. I won’t lose you. I refuse.”
She sounded so fierce, I found myself smiling. Jess was an idiot, but there was something to be said for unrelenting loyalty. “Okay?”
She pulled her feet up onto the seat of her chair, her toes sticking out over the edge. She’d painted her nails a bright, cheery teal. “I was thinking we could get someone to take the tag from you. Someone who deserves it, though, so we don’t feel bad.”
“WHAT?!” I hadn’t meant to yell, but I was too shocked not to yell. “No!” I shouted. “No! I’d never…not to anyone else. How would I live with myself? Jesus, Jess. Use your brain.”
Jess reached out to pinch me, hard, on the bicep. I smacked at her and rubbed the sore spot with my bandaged hand. “I am using my brain. If the choice is living with yourself or too dead to live with anything, I’m picking living with yourself every time. Guilt goes away. Being dead doesn’t,” she said.
I shook my head. It wasn’t an option. I’d rather chisel away at Mary Worth’s legacy to uncover her secrets than pass the problem to someone else. There had to be a reason for all of this, and when we found that reason, we’d have a solution. I had to believe something from Mary’s past was the linchpin to this whole terrifying mess. We just hadn’t found it yet.
“Well,” I croaked, my voice cracking from strain, “I didn’t think there was anything in the world that’d make me want to go to this church tonight. But congratulations, you’ve managed it.”
Jess sighed, resting her chin on her knee. Her eyes skimmed to her sheet-covered window. “Don’t be stupid, Shauna. You want to live. I want you to live. I’m not going to let you die.”
Anna returned after dinner, when the sun was past the horizon and the skies were more gray than gold. Her glasses were off, so either she’d put in contacts or preferred temporary blindness to having her eyes poked out by ghost fingers. I talked to my mother briefly, assuring her I’d be home later tonight. She said be in by midnight, but she wouldn’t walk in until after two—she tended bar at McReady’s until closing, so I wasn’t worried about missing curfew.
I texted Kitty to be sure she didn’t want to be in on this madness. She sent me a message back, saying Out with Bronx, followed by a smiley emoticon.
“Kitty’s talking to Bronx,” I said as we waited for the last light to disappear. I wanted to avoid the deathmobile as long as possible. “I’m wondering if he texted her after the Mary thing at school yesterday. Either way, I’m hoping good things come of it.”
“Same,” Anna said. “Except I’m mad she didn’t tell me about it herself. I wonder if she thought I’d try to talk her out of going out with him again?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? But if she thought you’d fight her on it, probably. You know she doesn’t do confrontation.”
“I, for one, thank God they’re talking,” Jess said. “Maybe if he sticks it in her she’ll stop being such a huge drain. One more guilt trip and I was going to feed her to a crocodile.”
Anna reached out to whack Jess’s forearm, her face scrunched up like she smelled something foul. “That’s so crude. Did you have to put it that way?”
Jess’s smile was unrepentant.
We piled into the car at nine, this time with Anna in the front passenger seat and me sitting center in the back, my legs straddling the bump between the two foot wells. I slouched down, a box of salt in my lap. Anna had devised an ingenious method to prevent us from being Mary mauled: clear packaging tape. She drizzled salt crystals over the sticky part before laying strips across the glass on a diagonal. It wasn’t a solid line, but at least we knew the granules were enough to keep Mary from pushing through.
Jess got us to Solomon’s Folly before ten. There was something different about the town after dark. During the day, the Folly was any other small New England town with its picket fences and quaint storefronts, but at night, it took a turn. The narrow streets had no lights. The drive was one tiny, dark, curving road into the next. Fog spread over the land in a thick paste, casting a dank pallor over the sprawling fields and farmland. The trees were clawed behemoths looming over the roads, a canopy of foliage blocking the moon and any vestiges of its light.
“Good God, this place is creepy,” Anna said. We passed a gas station on the main stretch, a neon open sign blinking in the window. The lights above the gas pumps were lightbulbs on strings, each swinging with the breeze.
Jess said nothing as we turned onto a stretch of dirt road that made the car shimmy. She guided us away from civilization and toward…I didn’t know what. Nothingness. We were in the middle of nowhere, our car bouncing over the divots in the gravel beneath us.
The road narrowed until it was only suitable for a single car. It sloped downward, too, though it was too dark to see what it sloped toward. Jess killed the engine and plunged us into perfect darkness. She fumbled around in the front seat until a circle of light blasted her in the eyes. A Maglite. She handed me and Anna flashlights as well, each a fraction of the size of her own. Jess threw open her door, and Anna followed suit. I climbed out next with a flashlight in one hand, a salt box in the other. Neither gave me any comfort.
Jess aimed her flashlight down on the ground. I heard rushing water and the call of a night bird. Anna paused to swing her flashlight toward the river. The water was black and angry, the banks steep. The trees nearby were all dead, their branches dry and emaciated—like Mary’s spindly, bony arms. I shuddered and stepped to Anna’s side. She trembled beside me.
We stood that way awhile, peering at the river, until a light turned on across the water. I jumped in surprise. There was so much darkness here that a flash of light was startling; it was a sun against a blackened canvas. It took me a second to realize it was a porch light. There was a house on the opposite bank, and though I didn’t like the idea of being seen tromping around the old church, it was good to know we weren’t far from the outside world.
“We should go,” I said. Anna nodded and turned her flashlight away so we wouldn’t be spotted. A screen door slammed across the way. It may have been too late for secrecy.
Jess’s footsteps were fading in the distance. We scrambled to catch up, Anna stumbling in a hole hidden in the knee-high grass. I looped my arm around her waist to hold her upright. Once she was steady, she continued to cling to me, the salt box wedged in between our bodies. Jess walked deeper into the night, her path keeping us parallel to the river. The walk went on and on, taking us uncomfortably far from the car. Finally, Jess stopped. My eyes adjusted to the light as I took in the enormous black lump of a building twenty feet in front of us.
Churches are supposed to be pointy things that stretch to the sky, but this church had long ago lost its steeple and portions of its roof. It looked like a dome now or, with the rooms extending from the sides and the shadowy trees surrounding them, a hulking wood tick feeding from the ground. Jess swung the Maglite up to the entrance where double doors once stood. There was an open archway inviting the unsuspecting into its maw. That’s how I saw the church—a monstrous, living creature that wanted to swallow us alive.
“Oh, this can’t be a good idea,” Anna said.
Jess walked on. “It’s necessary.”
Jess approached the front of the church and pressed her hand flat against the stones. She pulled back and rubbed her fingers together as she craned her head back. “It feels wet. Like, slimy-wet. Be careful. Don’t fall.”
“Be care...” Anna’s voice died as Jess ducked inside the passageway, taking the light of her big flashlight with her. Anna and I shared a moment of solidarity standing there together—until we heard the rustling overhead. The trees lacked the foliage to make any sound. I swung my flashlight up just in time to catch them. Bats.
“Oh, holy crap. Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said.
Catching a glimpse of flying furballs, Anna grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the church. For better or worse, we were going in.
“How did you ever find this place?” I asked into the dark. I could barely see, but I could hear Jess fumbling around nearby. She cursed as something skittered across the stone floor. It struck the wall next to me with a loud clack.
Anna swung her flashlight in a wide circle. The main room of the church was smaller than I’d expected. The congregation must have only had about a dozen pews for worshippers. At the altar, there were two arching holes where windows used to be, but the panes were devoid of glass. A tree branch had grown in through one of the gaps, its ends spearing through the roof. Slivers of moonlight cast silver shadows across the black walls.
“We’re near my grandparents’ house. It’s a
ways up the river. I’d come out here as a kid with my cousin to play,” Jess said.
I eased farther inside, following the sound of Jess’s voice past piles of rubble. There was a smell I couldn’t identify—almost like cleaning solution. My sneakers crunched through leaves and debris. I slipped. It wasn’t just the moisture that sent me colliding into the walls. There was a layer of muck smeared across the floor stones, too. Bracing, I swung my flashlight down to examine the murky, lumpy texture on the floor. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what it was.
Anna reached out to steady me, her hand gripping my elbow. I saw Jess duck through an open doorway to our right.
“What are you looking for?” I called out.
“Mary talked about a basement doorway. I’m trying to find it. There’s nothing in here but grit and broken ceiling, though. A few bookcases.”
“Didn’t she say Elizabeth watched her get locked inside? She was decorating the pews when he dragged Mary off. This main room is where the pews would be. The door’s got to be somewhere in here,” Anna replied.
Anna was right. I turned my flashlight to sweep the area. The back wall beneath the windows was solid—there was no door to be found. I edged farther to the left inside the main room. There was a door opposite the one Jess had crept through that I guessed to be the entryway to the second side room. An old bureau was pushed flush to the wall. The bureau was wide enough and tall enough that something could be hidden behind it. I eased my way across the cold, slimy stones, taking Anna with me.
“Hey, Jess. Come here!” I called out. Anna and I shuffled together, our feet moving like we were skating. As we neared the corner, the smell intensified. Now I recognized it as ammonia. Why ammonia here? Was it from the dresser? The dark wood was covered in a pale green mold, and there were distortions and lumps riddling the surface.
“Now what?” Anna asked.
“We move the dresser, I guess,” I said.
Mary (Bloody Mary) Page 12
