by Rachel Rust
His fingers brush mine, resting against them for a moment. When I don’t pull away, he takes my hand in his, caressing it with his thumb. A quick thrill trails down my spine, spiking my entire emotional state. Everything whirls together—the delight of him holding my hand, the closeness of him, the confusion of his situation, and the pain of my torn-up family.
I force my mouth to remain closed. But the deluge of emotions is too much to hold back, and I burst open like a dam
“It’s my parents. They’re…” A tear drips onto the old paper, leaving a darkened splatter. I push through the lump in my throat, and when my mouth opens, years of frustration pour out. “They’re not okay; they’re getting a divorce. They fight every day, been doing it for years. You know why I’m in the school band? Not because music is my favorite thing; it’s because I’ve used the music to drown them out. I practice every single day, which they ironically praise me for, not knowing that I only practice because, when I play, I can’t hear them downstairs tearing apart our family with their shouting and disrespect. They say awful things to each other, then put on a smile when I come into the room, as if I couldn’t hear them. It’s like they don’t even try to get along. Not even for my sake. They sent me here because they’re up in Minneapolis finalizing the divorce. And when I move back in August, my mom will be out of the house, in a condo, not with us anymore.”
I suck in a deep breath, and my body shudders. My cheeks are wet, my eyes cloudy.
“They’re selfish assholes. My entire childhood has pretty much been layered with anger and resentment. My mom has always pushed me to be someone I’m not. She’s a ruthless lawyer and wants me to be like her—a demanding force to be reckoned with. But I’m not like that; I’m just…me. I think that disappoints her because we barely spend time together anymore. And then there’s my dad. His marriage has fallen apart, but he’s too damn passive to do anything about it. He’ll yell back at my mom when they argue, but he doesn’t really fight for what he wants. He just lets things slip away when life gets too hard and it pisses me off.”
David squeezes my hand, and he allows me to sit in silence for several minutes until my quivers calm and the tears stop.
“Sorry,” I say wiping my face with the backs of my hands.
“Don’t apologize,” he says. “I’m sorry about your parents. But I’m glad you told me.”
I stretch back, pulling my hand from his, and then re-do my messy bun. “I understand that my parents are just people, and I get that relationships don’t always work out. But it seems like they gave up the second it got hard. They didn’t even try.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to give up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like you’ve said before, you only have one year of high school left. Get through it and move on with your own life. Your parents will always be your parents, but you’re almost an adult and it’s okay to fight for yourself and your own future. Trust me, life is short. You have to make it better yourself. If you like the clarinet, play the clarinet. If you don’t like the sound of your parents fighting, throw the clarinet away and tell them to shut the hell up.”
I laugh, sending leftover tears down my cheek. “I’d love to see the look on my mom’s face if I told her to shut up. But you’re right and I’ve known that for a while—I have to concentrate on myself. I love my parents. I just don’t want to put up with them anymore.”
“Says every seventeen-year-old everywhere.”
“I guess you would know. My parents may have shipped me off to Iowa to get away from the realities of divorce, but I know why I’m actually here.” I pick up the next newspaper article. “I’m gonna save your ass.”
“Chessie, don’t put too much pressure on yourself to solve everything. It’s okay if—”
“Shut up and help me.”
He smiles and picks up another paper. “Yes, ma’am.”
I read the article in my hand. Then another. And another. Before long, half the floor is littered with papers as we read. There’s little sound except a mild wind against the windows and the quiet shuffling of papers. We say next to nothing, but the air is thick with our private thoughts.
Nothing in the articles and local documents seem helpful on the surface, yet I can’t stop reading. The murders, the crime scene, the family, the townspeople. Nothing had set this town apart from any other small town in the country—until that night. It’s as if the murders had shifted the ground under their feet. After the bloody ending of the Moore family and Stillinger girls, the village changed. People’s faith in each other had eroded; no one knew who to trust anymore.
I suppose as generations went on, things got back to normal. People went back to waving and smiling, and probably became less concerned with locked doors. But now, with the missing girls, it seems that distrust could be returning. Where are the girls? Will there be more taken? And who the hell took them?
For a town so small, there sure are a lot of unanswered questions…and a lot of untimely deaths.
I pry my eyes from the paper in my hand and look around the house. The doorway to the kitchen is behind me, and to the right of that is another doorway leading to a set of stairs. In the far corner of the living room a third doorway leads into another darkened room.
“David,” I say.
“Hmm?” he asks without looking up from his own piece of paper.
I stand, picking up a lantern by its thin metal handle. As it moves, the light disappears from David’s paper, leaving it blacked out. “Where did they die?”
He hesitates but gets to his feet. He grabs the other lantern and stares at the opening to the stairs. “Most of them were killed up there.”
“Show me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The air grows hot and musty the farther up the narrow steps we climb. David is ahead of me. No way am I going first. Though having my back exposed to the dark, empty first floor isn’t ideal either, and I spend most of the time looking down as I’m walking up, to make sure there’s no third party joining us on our tour. The glow from my lamp only extends a few feet out. Beyond that is only blackness. The house feels empty, and I can only hope I’m right.
The stairs are steep and narrow. David arrives at the top and moves to the side to allow me to step onto the second floor. It doesn’t open into a hallway like my grandparents’ house. The stairs lead directly into an empty bedroom. The scent of rotting wood is strong, combined with a stagnation that tells me we’re the first bodies in a long time to churn the air up here.
“Josiah and Sarah were in this room,” David whispers. His lowered voice doesn’t seem to come from a place of fear, but out of respect. And, I assume, guilt. He touches the slanted side of the ceiling, and then reaches down and gently curls his fingers over my wrist, making my heart beat faster. I like his warm, strong hand on mine in such a bleak place. He places my fingers on the ceiling, and I drag them along the surface until they hit a large indentation.
My stomach churns.
“It’s from the back blow of the axe,” David says.
I yank my hand down as fast as I can, wiping my fingers on my pants as though that can rid me of the sheer horror. The ceiling dent is actual physical evidence of the existence of the axe. It was in this room. It struck the ceiling…which meant it also struck something directly under the ceiling.
“The bed used to be here,” David says. “Josiah and Sarah were killed side by side. They think Joe died first, which makes sense. He was the biggest of them.”
I nod. “Take out the strongest first.” My stomach tightens and my mind’s eye sees the scene. A bed. Two bodies side by side. Bloodied and beaten. Until death do we part.
Until this moment, the stories were in books, and in my dreams, and in newspaper articles. But here in this room, right in front of me, two people lost their lives. Hacked to death. My face goes cold as blood rushes away from it. I sway.
David grabs my elbow. “You okay? Let’s go outside and get you some air.”
Yes. I want to say yes. I want to get out of the house and away from this sick version of reality in which I am stuck. But I force other words. Braver words. “No, I’m okay. Show me where the rest were.”
Where the children were killed. If I can’t handle the adult deaths, I don’t know how I’ll handle our next stop on the Death Tour. But I let David lead me through a doorway into the next bedroom.
“The four Moore kids were in here,” he says, raising his lantern to get a better view of the room. Layers of pastel wallpaper are stripped and torn, bubbled and curling up in places. The wood floor squeaks under our feet.
The window here faces my house—my bedroom window, which is dark and empty. I wonder how many times the Moore kids looked out this very window onto a town that they had trusted. They had no reason not to trust it. It had been a solid small town, with lots of good people. People who waved and smiled and said “hello.” But then one of those people stole their lives away.
David and I say nothing else while we stand in this room. What is there to say? The truth is so awful.
We head back through the first bedroom, toward the stairs, and I keep my eyes focused on David’s back, unwilling to look at the slanted ceiling with the axe dent. Once we’re back downstairs, David leads me to the doorway just off the living room.
It’s another bedroom. This one is smaller than the upstairs rooms, with peeling blue wallpaper. David doesn’t have to tell me who died in this room. By powers of deduction, I know.
“The Stillinger girls,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Lena was last.”
He nods. I’ve already told him this, but the words come out of my mouth anyway, because I can’t get her out of my head. She fought back. Through fear and pain, Lena fought back. She was brave.
But I am not brave. A chill runs up my spine, and I spin on my heels and flee the room. In the middle of the living room, I place the lantern on the floor and my hands go to my knees. I concentrate on my breathing while staring at the old wood floor. Tommy’s feet were on this floor, fleeing from what he had done. That asshole ruined so many lives—and not just those he killed. Their families, the townspeople, David. The ripple effect of those axe blows are still reverberating.
A hand rests gently on my back. “C’mon,” David says. “Let’s go outside.”
He leads me to the front door, and as I step onto the front porch, I inhale deeply. Compared to the stale air of the house, the breezy outside air is wonderful in my throat and lungs.
“Sorry, I had to get out of there.”
“It’s okay.” David’s hand returns to my back. “Why don’t we—”
“Well, well, well,” a high-pitched voice says, cutting through the quiet night air with a startling intensity. Samantha is standing on the sidewalk, one hand on her hip, and one hand holding the looped end of a dog leash. Next to her feet is a fluffy white dog whose beady eyes can barely be seen through a tuft of fur hanging from its forehead. Samantha smiles. “What are you two doing at this hour?”
I look to David, wondering what he’s going to say, and pissed at myself for being too intimidated to speak to Samantha. She doesn’t have a cigarette to flick this time, but something tells me she’s full of creative bitchiness.
David doesn’t say anything to her. He turns to shut the front door behind us.
“C’mon,” he says, cupping my elbow in his hand.
“But your papers are inside.”
“I’ll get ’em later. Let’s get you home.”
We walk through the yard overgrown with weeds. As Samantha and her puffy, white dog grow closer, I can’t look at her—I don’t want to look at her and her smug smile. It’s the same smile she gave me at the fireworks show five years ago…refusing to let me hang out with her and her friends even though I had taken her dare.
“Interesting place for a date,” she says. “Some people go to the movies. That’s where you took me for our first date, remember, David?”
I stop mid-step and look up at him. He dated her? How could he possibly have done that?
His hand on my elbow firms up to make me keep walking. “Go home, Samantha.”
“It’s a free country.”
“Then shut up and get out of our way,” he says.
She dramatically takes a wide step, opening up our path. “As you wish.”
I steal a glance at her as we pass by. She flips me off and continues down the sidewalk with her little dog that looks positively delighted with his late-night jaunt.
David and I walk to the steps of my front porch. I go up one step, so height-wise I’m almost face-to-face with him. He drops his hand from my elbow and avoids looking at me, perhaps knowing what I’m going to say.
“Samantha is your ex-girlfriend?” I ask.
“No, we’ve never dated. We saw a movie together last summer. Nothing else.”
Nothing else. I choose to believe this, although it’s none of my business who he’s dated, or who he’s kissed, or who he’s…I shake the thought from my head. Samantha’s pink and blue hair disappears down the next block. She doesn’t even know him—not like I do. She doesn’t know his secrets, his past, and his real identity.
David steps closer, touching my arm, and the warmth of his hand snaps me out of my Samantha trance. “Hey,” he says with a little grin. “Forget about her. How are you doing?”
I shrug. “I’ll survive.” My own words ring through my head. I’ll survive. But what if I didn’t? My heart pounds hard as an idea takes root. My eyes widen. “I have it! I know how to help you! I know where you can find someone to save! What if I put myself in harm’s way? I could stand in front of a train or something, and then at the last minute, you could push me out of the way, or I could stand on the highway and wait for a car and—”
“No.”
“But it could work.”
“And you could also end up dead.”
“But—”
“No.” David voice is stern, eyes ablaze. He takes another step toward me, wrapping a hand around each one of my upper arms. “I only have two days left until I’m eighteen. The chances of saving my last person in this life are slim to none. And I do not want you to jeopardize your life by trying to help me. It’s not worth it. If I die on my eighteenth birthday, I’ll come back in another life. If you die, that’s it, you’re gone for good.”
“But…”
He shakes his head in protest. “No, Chessie.” With a slight shuffle, he’s even closer to me, with our faces only a few inches from one another. “Promise me you won’t do anything dumb. If I only have a couple days, let me enjoy them.” He pauses with a half grin. “With you.”
My stomach somersaults as my eyes brim with tears. A nice boy wants to spend time with me…and soon he’ll be dead.
His thumb wipes away a tear that managed to escape my lower lashes. “Get some sleep, okay?”
I nod. He leans my way and my heart beats like it’s going to explode in my chest. This is it. My first real kiss. Not like Kyle’s lame peck under the mistletoe. A genuine kiss with the lips of a kind boy who cares for me.
I lean my body toward his, but his lips bypass mine and press against my forehead. I exhale with a slight tremble. It may not be my mouth, but his lips against my skin sends a dart of electricity down my core.
“Goodnight,” he whispers before pulling away.
“Night,” I say, barely able to speak, stomach still flip-flopping.
He turns and walks away, back to the house across the street to gather his papers and lamps. His tousled brown hair is highlighted yellow by the streetlamp. My fingers brush my forehead where his lips had just been.
No way is he dying again. Not on my watch.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I barely taste my Cap’n Crunch the next morning. My head is swimming with too much information. I hardly slept, but for a change it had nothing to do with the giggles or shuffling of ghostly feet. Instead, my mind spent the night trying in vain to proc
ess the reality that David was alive in 1912. He was there the night of the axe murders. He’s reincarnated.
And he is going to die in less than two days.
I drop my spoon into the half-eaten bowl of cereal and leave the kitchen. But I don’t get far before Grandma calls out to me.
“We’ll leave in an hour, so be ready!”
I stop and slump my shoulders. I don’t remember making any plans to do anything with her today. And I can’t today. David needs me—we have to find people to save.
“Where are we going?” I ask, not able to hide the whine in my voice.
Grandma comes around the corner, a disapproving look on her face. “The food drive at the church. Don’t tell me you forgot. We promised Pastor Schneider we’d help, remember?”
My eyes close. I had totally forgot about it.
“Do I have to go?”
Grandma’s glare answers in the affirmative. “One hour. Be ready.”
Shit.
The main hall in the church is full of tables and people. Rhonda from the diner is in charge, as she walks from table to table with a clipboard, making notes and asking and answering questions. Her wide smile never leaves her face, even when a hyperactive little boy falls into a tower of chicken noodle soup cans, sending them crashing onto the floor.
The room is divided into sections, and each grouping of tables has their own sign: Jars and Canned goods, Boxed goods, Bread and other bakery items, Milk, and Miscellaneous. The miscellaneous table consists of mostly coffee and dog food.
Grandma and I are working the boxed goods table. We have to stand and smile and thank people for bringing by their boxes of cereal, instant potatoes, mac ‘n’ cheese, and pancake mix. We stack them neatly into boxes, like food Tetris, and when those boxes get full, we bring them to a back table aptly labeled Boxes Ready to Go.
When we run out of boxes, a tall elderly man shoves four collapsed squares of cardboard and a roll of packing tape into my arms
