The Vampires of Vigil’s Sorrow

Cassandra Duffy

Day Moon Press

2012

Other Books by Cassandra:

Demons of Paradise

Astral Liaisons

Fabled Fang Girls

The Gunfighter and The Gear-head

The Last Best Tip

An Undead Grift for Christmas

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any matter whatsoever without the written permission, except in the cases of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations, and events are meant to be fictitious. Any similarity between any persons living, dead, or undead is completely coincidental. The events are fictional, although Vermont is definitely a real place, Vigil’s Hope is not a real town.

Day Moon Press

©2012 Cassandra Duffy

Cover Design by Katiie Kissglosse

Edited by Nichole Mauer

For Nikki

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Witch of Vigil’s Grove – Summer 1955 – Debbie

1 – 2 – 3

Part 2: The Pariah of Vigil’s Rest – Winter 1955 – Grace

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7

Part 3: Slumber in Broken Earth – Winter 1955 – Debbie

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6

Part 4: Repentance and Revenge of the Father – Spring 1956 – Henry

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9

Part 5: Angel of Solemnity – Autumn 1982 – Daphne

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9

Part 6: Blood Red Riding Hood – Autumn 2005 – Annabelle

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5

Part 7: Unburied Bones – Autumn 2005 – Annabelle and Debbie

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

Part 8: The Twisted Root – Autumn 1849 – Margaret

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7

Part 9: Peace for the Fallen – Autumn 2010 – Debbie, Annabelle, and Daphne

1 – 2 – 3

Part 1: The Witch of Vigil’s Grove

Summer 1955 – Debbie

1.

Deborah Poole’s unease at being touched by her boyfriend had steadily grown their entire senior year until the summer after. While everyone in Vigil’s Rest was talking wedding bells, she was ready to jump out of her skin whenever his hand landed on her shoulder. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with Philip Cox. In fact, if she was being honest, there was positively everything right about him, which was why the revulsion was so disconcerting.

Debbie watched Phil at the bottle game, valiantly trying to win her a stuffed bear by breaking old 7 Up bottles with a baseball while a carnival barker did his best to distract. Phil was an All-State shortstop in high school with offers from several minor league teams talking a someday chance at the majors. Debbie knew that carnival barker was no match for her beau, a fact that should have swelled her with pride, but she didn’t really care. She watched from a safe distance, holding his letterman’s jacket, glad he was having fun, but not particularly interested in any of the prizes he’d promised to win her. With his tight white t-shirt, khakis, and a smart Princeton haircut, there was little doubt Philip Cox was the dreamboat everyone kept telling Debbie he was, but she simply didn’t see it. Looking past his perfectly cocked arm, she spotted the rest of the cheer squad collected around the base of the Ferris wheel, watching Phil, their eyes practically devouring his muscular form.

Debbie knew the normal reaction would have been jealousy, but what she really wanted was for almost any of them to steal her boyfriend. She would altruistically let him go since she still couldn’t bring herself to do much more than necking, and selfishly she would be freed of the groping hands and dreary conversations about baseball and modified Chevys. She was a fream, an outsider, someone who looked like everyone else, dressed like everyone else, and acted like everyone else, but who secretly wanted to be something that she didn’t even have a name for. There was one word she knew for it, although it was an umbrella term for just about anything bad, and that was sin.

Phil glanced to her before his throw, smiled that all American boy smile, winked slyly, and without looking threw the baseball as hard as he could. The ball shattered a three bottle pyramid in an explosion of green glass shards. The other cheerleaders burst into cheers, applause, and feigned swooning. Debbie, despite being their captain, their leader, only smiled and offered Phil his jacket.

Homecoming queen, cheer captain, Harvest Festival Princess were all behind her with graduation and her eighteenth birthday having taken place two months prior. She had an acceptance letter from Barnard College at home, tucked at the bottom of her hope chest, along with a ticket, and money saved from babysitting to effect her escape. By the time her parents, Phil, her friends, or anyone knew what had happened, she would be on a bus to New York.

Phil exchanged the jacket Debbie was holding for the big sad-looking teddy bear the barker reluctantly had given him. She accepted the bear, thanked him with an obligatory kiss on the cheek, and stifled the routine grimace felt when he put his arm around her shoulders. They walked over to the Ferris wheel where the rest of the squad had gathered. The four girls fawned over them both, hinting repeatedly that there would be enough time for a June wedding in ‘56 if they started planning that fall. Debbie, who should have been the receptive audience for such talk, nodded and smiled at the appropriate times without participating, and Phil gave his usual awe-shucks responses that drove the girls into giggle fits.

Debbie had other interests though, namely Grace Corker’s smile. She was a new friend in comparison to the other girls that Debbie had known since grade school. Grace was from Maine, having moved to Vigil’s Rest three years ago when her father bought into the dairy processing plant. Grace was lovely with her bee-stung lips stained red from the cherry Snow cone she was eating and her dark brown hair in the short, sassy Elizabeth Taylor cut from the cover of “Movie World” magazine. Grace loved movies. She’d dragged Debbie to see East of Eden a dozen times that spring to moon over James Dean. Debbie had gone, long after the other girls stopped accepting the invitation, as Grace would lean against her shoulder and grasp her hand in girlish delight whenever James Dean appeared on screen. Debbie knew the attention was meant for him, but she soaked it up regardless.

The girls departed, leaving Debbie and Phil alone. Debbie watched longingly after Grace until they passed beyond the games to head into the pumpkin displays on the other end of the fairgrounds. Someone snapping their fingers pulled Debbie’s gaze away just in time to be blinded by a flash bulb going off. “You can pick it up at the end of the week,” a man said. “Thank you, sir, I will,” Phil replied. It took several moments of blinking away the white spot in her eyes before Debbie pieced together she’d had her picture taken.

“Don’t pay that man for a picture,” Debbie said sourly. “Let me clue you in: it’s all a scam.”

“We’re not all on the stick like you, Debbie-downer,” Phil said. “Besides, I wanted a picture of you holding that bear to show the grandkids someday.”

“Go easy on the money you spend on me, okay?” Debbie said.

“If that isn’t the living end: a girl asking not to have money spent on her,” Phil laughed. “You’re a kookie chick, Miss Poole.”

“I guess, I am, but on the square, go easy.”

Phil leaned in and kissed her aggressively, somehow slipping his jacket around her shoulders in the process. “It’s my money,” he said, “I’ll spend it how I want. Do you want a ride home or are you going to stay and gawk at the gourds?”

“I’ll walk,” Debbie said, resisting the urge to wipe her mouth.

“Suit yourself.” Phil walked a few steps off before turning back with a snap of his fingers. “Do you want to go out to Darren’s to see his new rod? It’s supposed to be a hopped-up Ford his dad bought him.”

“I’m listening to records with Grace tomorrow.”

“Bring her along,” Phil said. “Darren’s into that little fuzzy duck for some reason.”

Debbie cringed at the thought of pimply Darren Goff pawing at Grace in the backseat of some zoomed up Ford. “I’ll mention it,” Debbie lied. “No promises.”

In the fading light of the day, before the carnival’s midway could really get cranking for the night crowd, Debbie headed over to the pumpkin displays in hopes of catching up with the girls. The rows upon rows of freshly cut and blue ribbon worthy pumpkins set on wooden tables with note cards to tell the grower and strain were coming earlier and earlier. It used to be September before anyone would even dream of clipping a vine, but the fair was moved up to August to take advantage of the summer break and the 4H members scrambled to keep pace. Debbie’s shoes crunched across the straw lay down to create an autumn feel despite the oppressive heat of summer still lingering. There was talk of moving the fair back to October where it had originally started, but Debbie hoped not as she enjoyed the nightlife the carnival provided.

The girls were already gone, and Debbie was left to wander the pumpkins with the gifted teddy bear and Phil’s unwanted jacket resting hotly across her shoulders. He insisted on putting the jacket on her no matter how hot it was, but would chastise her anytime she brought anything near it that might stain. She’d given it back countless times only to find it wrapped back around her shoulders. She might have even left the jacket somewhere on purpose to teach him a lesson if she wasn’t leaving town herself; she didn’t want to hurt Phil unduly, although she knew that was likely to happen, and losing his jacket before breaking things off with a dear John letter seemed like a double rat thing to do.

She was on the edge of the fairgrounds, near the overflow dirt parking lot that wouldn’t fill up for another hour when she realized she was being followed. She was so engrossed in thoughts of pumpkins and her future freedom that she didn’t notice she’d picked up a tail until she was well out of screaming range of anyone who could do something about it. She glanced over her shoulder at the end of the last aisle of pumpkins and spotted the man with the intense eyes locked on her. He was a rangy thing with more than a few days worth of black stubble staining his face. His clothes were thread worn and mismatched. He was a stranger in a town where everyone knew everyone. A shiver of fear ran up Debbie’s back even as she broke out in a panicked sweat.

To turn back, she’d have to walk past him, or she could keep going out into the parking lot and across into Vigil’s Wood; neither option sounded remotely appealing. The man wasn’t one to let her set and decide either. His hand slipped into his pocket and he began walking toward her with a determined forward slant to his shoulders. She dropped the teddy bear and ran. A glance to either direction when her shoes hit the dirt of the overflow parking lot confirmed both sides were fenced and gated. She didn’t know how fast the man could run, but she knew she couldn’t climb a six-foot security fence in her poodle skirt. But she could run, and fear only made her saddle shoes fly faster until she ran directly out of Phil’s jacket, hitting the edge of the woods at a dead sprint. She didn’t dare chance a look over her shoulder to find her pursuer as she weaved through the trees. One misplaced step, one low hanging tree branch, or one twisted ankle on an exposed root would guarantee she was caught. If she could keep her pace and maybe lose him in the forest, she could loop around and double back to the road to find help. She hoped he was the half-starved scarecrow he seemed to be and she definitely hoped she was the graceful deer everyone always told her she was.

When the only sounds reaching her ears were the huffing and puffing of her own breath and the crunching of her own shoes along the forest floor, she slowed and looked back over her shoulder. There was no one behind her. The forest was dark and calm, impenetrably guarded against the setting sun. She searched for a break to either side, someway to escape through the thick trees in order to begin her doubling back plan. Every time she ventured off the deer trail she’d run down, she found the direction completely impassable. Darkness settled almost completely over the woods when she returned to the deer trail for the fourth time. She was frustrated and frightened with only two obvious options left: continue deeper into the woods or risk going back the exact same way she came. She was dirty, tired, and had calmed to the point where she wasn’t entirely sure anymore that she’d even been chased.

The answer to her doubts came quick as she stood uncertainly weighing her options. A hand grasped her by the hair at the back of her head and painfully yanked her off her feet. Fetid breath and rotting teeth were suddenly blowing commands in her face, calling her a bitch for running, and promising she would pay. Strong, rough, dirty hands pawed at her clothes. She struggled until she heard the snap of a pocket knife blade locking into place and felt the cold metal press against her throat. Then the man was gone. The weight of him lifted off her entirely and she caught a glimpse of him flying back up through the trees with an expression of utter shock painted on his gaunt features.

Debbie didn’t wait to see who her savior was or if they might choose to claim her for themselves. She scrambled to her feet and ran in the direction she’d come, her energy renewed by a jolt of fresh fear.

The midway was in full swing and the overflow parking lot packed with cars by the time she got back to the fairgrounds. She weaved through the parked cars until she was back in the relative safety of the pumpkin displays. A handful of families were making their inspections of the gourds and gave her disheveled appearance a wary glance. She’d been attacked, lost the bear, lost the jacket, and she couldn’t even correctly identify who had chased or saved her. She allowed herself to be led further into the fairgrounds by police officers summoned by one of the women from her church.

The police officers escorted her to the fairground offices, called her parents, and took her statement. It required a dozen tries to convince them she meant “black stubble on his face” and not “black man with stubble” in her description of her attacker. It took her even longer to explain why she’d run into the woods instead of calling for help. The entire experience, which wore on through the rest of the evening well into the night, left her with the distinct impression the police officers believed she’d made the whole thing up for the attention.

After her parents arrived, it appeared her father would side with the police officers as well, stating she’d given herself quite a fright, and asked the police officers if they might take a look around to see if they could find Phil’s jacket that his daughter had so carelessly lost. They assured her father they would, and one actually said, “case closed” on his way out the door. Debbie could have spit she was so angry at their dismissal.

Back at home, it took an hour more to convince her mother that she didn’t need to sleep in their room that night. She was eighteen and wasn’t in any danger in her own bedroom. She tried for several hours to sleep, but always came away with nothing to show for it, finally abandoning the project to step onto the front step to smoke a cigarette. Her parents both smoked and knew she’d picked up the habit, with differing opinions on the matter. Her father believed it was unladylike, but her mother stated it would be a good practice to help keep her weight down. Debbie thought it was relaxing even though it had long since lost the rebellious edge that initially drew her to it. Sitting on the porch swing in their quiet little post-war neighborhood, she was halfway through her second cigarette when her nerves finally began to calm.

Women’s shoes clicked along the new sidewalk that had just been poured on half their street. For an instant Debbie considered rushing back into the house to hide. She managed to tamp down her fear with a healthy revival of the anger at her father and the police officers thinking it would all serve them right if she was murdered right there on her own porch by someone they all thought didn’t exist. Sadly, or perhaps more thankfully, the clicking shoes at 2 AM belonged to a girl. She was tall, blond, and waif thin with ethereal white skin that positively glowed in the moonlight.

Debbie had never seen the girl before, but she recognized the teddy bear she was carrying as one from the carnival bottle toss game and the letterman jacket she was wearing as one belonging to a baseball player from her school. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. The girl might have been a couple years behind her, and Debbie knew she didn’t pay much attention to sophomores or freshman. Half the girls in town likely had similar bears won by boyfriends, brothers, or fathers. And there were more than enough baseball players with similar jackets to give to girls. All of her explanations evaporated though when the girl turned right at the walkway and began coming up the stone path toward the house.

She was pretty, although looked a little ill and unkempt. She had a slender face with large, brown doe eyes that looked a little sad. While Phil’s jacket was large on Debbie, the blond girl was positively swimming in it.

“How did you find the jacket?” Debbie asked. She stood from the swing, stubbed out the cigarette on the railing, and wandered down to the edge of the porch to meet the girl.

“It was easy once all the cars left,” the girl said in a soft voice. “I was going to leave it with the bear on your front porch so you could wake up to it.”

“But then I wouldn’t get a chance to say thank you,” Debbie said.

“I don’t mind,” the girl replied.

“Well, thank you all the same.” Debbie took the offered jacket and bear, holding the former slung over her forearm and the latter by one leg letting it dangle. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but having the jacket and the bear mysteriously return to her possession before morning would only give weight to everyone’s already held belief that she’d made it all up. Once the jacket was off, Debbie noticed the girl’s farm dress was ancient, mended in two dozen places, and spoke of a hard life of labor. Farm girls on the edge of town weren’t always allowed to go past grade school in their education, which might be why Debbie had never seen her, and she certainly looked like she’d worked in a field recently. “Do you want to sit for awhile?” Debbie asked.

“With you? On the porch swing? Really?” the girl asked.

“Nope, by yourself on a hot poker, of course with me, silly.” Debbie walked down the step and took the girl by the hand. Her hand was slender and cold, but surprisingly soft for what Debbie assumed was her occupation. She set aside the bear and jacket unceremoniously and sat with the girl a moment, gently swaying on the swing. “What’s your name?” Debbie asked, finally breaking the silence between them.

“Margaret Mayhew,” the girl said.

“Well Maggie-May, you’re a brave girl being out and about at this hour just to bring me a jacket and bear,” Debbie said.

“Oh, I’m always out at night,” Maggie said. “Nobody notices me.”

“I noticed you,” Debbie said, “and I’m glad to meet you. I’m Debbie Poole, by the way.”

“I know,” Maggie said with a shy smile. “Everyone knows who you are.” She reached into one of the patchwork pockets on the front of her dress and produced one of the fliers that announced Debbie as the Harvest Festival Princess; it had a lovely picture of her wearing a crown of leaves and her million dollar smile.

“Oh, that,” Debbie said dismissively. “Small towns and their small town heroes. You aren’t just carrying that around, are you?”

“No, no,” Maggie said. “The man had it on him.”

Debbie’s head began to swim. Cold pinpricks rose on her skin. Something about Maggie seemed unexpectedly familiar. “Wh-what man?” Debbie asked, her mouth suddenly dry.

“The man who chased you into the woods,” Maggie explained, her voice taking on a distant quality. “I found this on his body.”

A scene of horror flashed through Debbie’s mind like a wildfire. A repressed memory restored, so fresh from earlier that day, she wondered how it ever remained hidden. Maggie was curled over the man’s body, her face smeared in fresh blood, hands buried to the wrists in the drifter’s shredded chest seeking out a major blood vessel that she finally pulled free to bite at with animalistic glee. The mental trauma of the moment that clearly buried the memory for her own protection snapped back on her, and Debbie fainted sideways onto the porch swing, making a soft landing on the jacket and teddy bear.

2.

Her parents awoke her the following morning, and as Debbie assumed, used the jacket and teddy bear as proof that the whole scare of the day before must have been a product of too much excitement and sugary snacks at the fair. They were on the way to a pancake breakfast for the local John Birch Society and told her she was allowed to play her records with Grace as loud as she liked so long as the neighbors didn’t mind. Debbie nodded her agreement and staggered back into the house.

The shaken feeling lingering from the night before faded and Debbie began to wonder if maybe she wasn’t going nuts. She didn’t even want to add fuel to the fires of disbelief by telling everyone the bear and jacket were returned by some farm girl, the same farm girl who had apparently saved her the night before by rending her nameless attacker limb from limb. The whole encounter with Maggie had to be a nightmare brought on by stress, but if she had the jacket and teddy bear, she must not have been attacked, so there wasn’t any reason for her to be stressed…the circular logic of it all didn’t fit together.

Debbie’s train of thought came to an abrupt halt when Grace knocked on the door. She opened the door to her friend’s full effervescence. Grace bounded in with a record case in one hand and a pint of ice cream in the other. It was a normal occurrence that smoothed over most of Debbie’s rough edges left ragged from the previous day. Grace didn’t know about the attack yet, although the entire town would probably hear about it before lunch. Debbie wanted to soak up as much of Grace’s happiness before rumors and doubts got too thick for anything to be enjoyed.

They grabbed two spoons from the kitchen and ran up the stairs to Debbie’s room. Draped over the bed, they listened to Grace’s rock & roll records, sharing the pint of butterscotch ice cream available only once a year through a local dairy during the annual county fair. Debbie began to feel the tension and fear seep from her as they sang along to the songs they’d listened to dozens of times. Grace’s popularity was almost entirely owed to her records as her parents were possibly the only ones in all of Vermont who didn’t object to the new wave music and thus allowed her to buy as much as she liked.

Debbie didn’t want to talk to Grace about the day before, which would only bring it all back to the surface, but she did want to confide in someone about her future plans for New York, and more than that, she wanted to make a proposal with time left for it to actually stand a chance of coming true.

Grace wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon and was going ape over it; her father had gotten her an office girl job downtown, filing papers for the ancient accountant their family used come tax time. With no boyfriend to become a future husband, Grace would work the job, live at home, and hope for a chance to catch the eye of a townie at some point, just like her parents wanted. But Debbie had another option in the form of enough saved money to purchase a second bus ticket to go along with the one she had for herself.

Debbie shut the door and leaned her back against it, biting her lower lip in anticipation of what she believed was a hatching conspiracy with a willing partner. “I have something to show you,” Debbie said.

Grace, catching on Debbie’s barely bottled excitement, hopped onto her knees on the bed and beamed. “Spill, dolly! You look like you’re about to burst.”

Debbie rushed to her hope chest, buzzing with a sugar high and expectations. She pulled aside clothes and her stack of yearbooks to pluck out the acceptance letter to Barnard College, a bus ticket, and an envelope with fifty dollars. “I’m going to New York next week,” Debbie blurted out, “and I want you to come with me. Cast an eyeball on this!”

Grace’s lovely green eyes went wide with excitement. She bounded from the bed and rushed to Debbie to get a closer look at everything she had in her hands as though she couldn’t believe it all existed. The letter, the bus ticket, and the envelope full of cash passed every authenticating test Grace could think of in her excitement.

“I’ll absolutely cop a breeze with you!” Grace said. “I have a few bucks squirreled away I can throw in. We can get a place, and when you and Phil get circled, you can leave the trendy New York loft to me when you move out to the…”

“Phil’s not coming,” Debbie interrupted her. “It’d be just you and me.”

“What about your parents?”

“They’ll know when I’m gone.”

“What about the ring Phil said he’d buy?”

“We’ll split first and save him the money.”

“What will people say?”

“Are you writing a book? Just say yes or no.”

“Yes, obviously yes,” Grace said. “Two girls in the city living it up—no need to apple butter me into this deal.”

Grace threw her arms around Debbie’s shoulders, adding a little hop to their hug. The embrace lingered a little beyond where it normally ended. Debbie closed her eyes, letting her chin rest on Grace’s shoulder. She licked her lips as the world slowed down around her. Shaking hands grasped Grace around the waist. Underwater-slow, their lips came together. Debbie inhaled deeply, pressing further into the kiss with Grace responding in kind. It was a gamble in an excited moment, but Debbie was certain Grace understood.

Debbie was wrong. Grace reared back like a frightened horse, shattering the kiss with a hard slap across Debbie’s left cheek. “Freak!” Grace shrieked and shoved Debbie away from a kiss that moments before seemed entirely mutual. Grace’s face was flush with excitement and her hands shook with uncertain anger.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Debbie plead. “It was a mistake. Can we please forget…?”

“I knew there was something wrong with you,” Grace hissed. “The girls were whispering that you didn’t go all the way with Phil, and now I know why. You’re a freak!”

“I was just confused,” Debbie said, frightened, hurt tears running freely down her cheeks. “Can we forget this ever happened and go to New York?”

“I’m not going anywhere with you and you’re not going anywhere when I tell your parents what you did.” Grace scooped up her records and stormed out of the room.

Debbie followed her down the stairs pleading with no result. Grace stormed out the front door hurling a final insult over her shoulder that Debbie had never heard before. Dyke. She was a dyke. It was spit from Grace’s mouth with such venom that Debbie knew it must be a horrible, hateful thing. She collapsed on the living room couch to sob. She finally had the word for what she was feeling—dyke.

An officious knock came on the open front door, which swung on its hinges after Grace’s slamming only rebounded back to ajar when the force was too much for the latch to catch. Debbie tore herself away from the pillow she was crying into to find the same two police officers from the night before standing at the threshold of the living room.

“We have a development in your case, Miss Poole,” the shorter of the two officers said.

“Apparently a few women reported a drifter skulking around in the hall of mirrors that afternoon, but he was gone already by the time we got down there,” the other officer said.

“If you hadn’t insisted it was a black man, we might have connected the incidents sooner,” the short officer said.

Debbie wanted to scream in their faces. She’d told them repeatedly it wasn’t a black man only to have them insist over and over that it must have been. “I told you, he was a white man with black stubble,” Debbie said through clenched teeth.

“That’s not what we have in our notes,” the shorter officer said. “We’ve picked up a few possible suspects. If you’ll come down to the stationhouse with us, you can point out your attacker.”

Debbie huffed and shook her head. “Fine.”

On her way to the door, the two officers exchanged a look when the taller one spotted the letterman jacket and teddy bear sitting on the kitchen table. She heard the shorter one scoff and mutter something behind her back.

3.

The time spent at the stationhouse was a colossal waste. The three men they’d picked up as suspects appeared to be nothing more than random farmhands from surrounding farms. They were all clean shaven and well-fed, not remotely matching the disheveled and lanky description she’d given the police. They assured her they would keep looking, although she heard the same scoff and mutters following her back out of the building as the shorter officer no doubt shared among the other officers that the allegedly missing bear and jacket were remarkably discovered on the hysterical girl’s kitchen table.

Debbie arrived home to find her parents waiting for her along with Pastor Gunderson. They had the acceptance letter, envelope full of money, bus ticket, and a signed testimony from Grace stating how sexually perverse and sinful Debbie was. The intervention for her soul pressed on Debbie from all sides. Bible verses were read to threaten her with eternal damnation and suffering in hell. The betrayal to the family implied by the college acceptance letter and bus ticket to New York only further confirmed Debbie’s wicked, sinful ways. Finally, the entire business with the attempted rape was hurled at her feet—Pastor Gunderson demanded that she confess to making it all up under the devil’s advisement. Showing remarkable strength that surprised her parents, her pastor, and most importantly herself, Debbie refused to crack under the pressure. She denied wrong doing in wanting to go to college, denounced Grace’s recount of what had happened as overly dramatic, and reasserted the same story she’d had all along regarding the previous day’s attack. She had a label now, a word for what she was, and it gave her strength—dyke.

The defiance made the decision that was already made before Debbie had even walked through the door all the more valid: she would be committed and cured as soon as possible. Pastor Gunderson knew a doctor at the state mental hospital he could call. The sin of homosexuality was a recognized mental illness with a proscribed cure of electroconvulsive therapy. Debbie was roughly escorted to her room by Pastor Gunderson and her father to the wails and bemoaning of her mother. Debbie kept the stoicism of Joan of Arc on the surface, but secretly screamed inside for the injustice of it all. Her money earned by her work, her spot in college achieved through four years of diligent study, and her very freedom to choose for herself were all torn away from her a mere week before she could use all three.

Sitting in her room, with the door nailed shut behind her, she considered the contents of her life with an eye toward setting herself free in the last way left open to her. Commitment and electro-shock were a fate worse than hell and she was determined to make a final choice for herself before succumbing to it. Her parents had apparently foreseen this eventuality, most likely under the advisement of Pastor Gunderson who talked as though he’d successfully completed this plan on more than a dozen occasions before, as every sharp object she knew had once existed in her room was suspiciously absent. Debbie, resourceful and clever in ways her parents weren’t, set about tearing and braiding her bed sheet into a proper rope.

She had nearly completed the project that would be her salvation when a knock came at her window. Phil’s face, under illuminated by a flashlight, appeared in the side yard window. She rushed over and gently slid the squeaky window up. He was standing on a twelve foot ladder liberated from her neighbor’s garage with a savior’s grin on his face.

“Grace told me what happened,” Phil said, “and then she made a pass at me. I told her off and came right over. I’ve got a way out of this if you’re interested.”

“Your car’s here?” Debbie asked, hope creeping into her formerly void future.

“Parked around the corner,” Phil said, waggling his eyebrows.

She slipped out the window, abandoning the bed sheet noose and her former life without as much as a note to mark her departure. She wouldn’t take anything her parents could claim was theirs, leaving no recourse for them to follow her. Sure, she would have to work, maybe borrow money from Phil if he was willing, but the letter to Barnard wasn’t what was important—her acceptance would be on file even if she showed up a week early, and her scholarship could more than pay back Phil for the bus ticket when the money…but they weren’t heading toward the Greyhound station. Phil’s car was crawling along the back roads leading around the edge of Vigil’s Wood to make out point.

“Where are you taking me?” Debbie asked, knowing full-well their destination.

“I told you, I can fix this.”

They parked on the expanse of flat grass on the bluff beneath the World War II air raid siren tower. Debbie couldn’t believe she’d fallen for such an obvious trick. In her mind, she was already broken up with Phil. The letter to him was written, addressed, and stamped, waiting to be dropped in a mailbox on the way out of town; a technicality had kept it in the top drawer of her desk with no hope of ever being read by him.

“One round of backseat bingo with me and all this dyke talk will dry up and blow away,” Phil said, sliding closer across the front bench seat of the old Buick. “I’ll get the ring tomorrow and we can be committed by Friday. If you’re my wife, your parents can’t send you away to the coo coo’s nest.”

“No,” Debbie said, trying desperately to sound stern. “I want to go to college. I want to go to New York. I appreciate your saving me, but this isn’t…”

“Ease up, lay back, and all this thinking about college will vanish,” Phil said, inching ever closer. “This is your only way out.”

Debbie clenched her legs tight together and turned her head. Phil pressed on, shoving his hand between the tops of her thighs to try to part her skirt. His insistent mouth lost all the gentlemanly behavior on their previous trips to make out point, spilling sloppy kisses along her neck and ear when she refused to give him her mouth. She put her hands against his chest and pushed away, but he had a firm grip on her leg with one hand and an even firmer grip on the back of the seat with the other; he wasn’t going anywhere but forward. She shifted in the seat to turn her hips away from him, a scream escaping her lips when his hand finally tore a button free on her skirt. He grunted against her, losing his grip when he tried to unbuckle the front of his own belt. She took the opening in his advances and grasped the door handle. She tugged hard and leaned opposite his body weight pressed against her. They both tumbled out of the car. While she fell completely to the ground outside, his lower body remained awkwardly tangled on the front seat in mid-undress. He reached for her, grasping the front of her blouse with a groping hand; rage washed over his face as he began to pull her back toward the car. She tucked her leg in and pushed against the car’s frame to free herself. Her shoe slipped across the metal, dropping off the edge and contacting Phil fully in the face. Her blouse ripped open, allowing her enough slack to escape entirely. She inched away on her back, struggling to gain her feet.

Phil’s nose was bleeding and an expression of fury marred his normally handsome face. She leapt to her feet, turned, and ran down the hill away from where the car could travel with Phil close on her heels. She didn’t think she could outrun him, but she knew she couldn’t outrun the car.

His chase was hampered by the thickness of the forest in ways hers wasn’t. She slipped through the thick underbrush, sacrificing clothing, hair, and blood to escape while he crashed through behind her, swearing and cursing at her for being ungrateful and stupid. Unlike her previous escape into the forest, she had no plans of doubling back, no hope of escaping to return to civilization for help. There was nowhere for her to turn, no one to save her, and even if she found her way back to the police, they would only return her to her parents.

Out of the thickets part of the wooded edge, she grasped the tattered remains of her clothing close and found enough open ground to stumble feebly through. The futility and betrayal of it all weighed heavily on her. She couldn’t imagine why escaping would even matter anymore. Her parents despised her, God wanted to cast her into hell for what she was, Grace thought she was a freak, and the only solutions available were a mental hospital and 10,000 volts or being raped by a boyfriend she only stayed with out of politeness. For a delirious moment she thought she might just live out her days as a crazed forest person eating chipmunks and acorns until finally freezing to death during the winter.

She stumbled into a clearing where the moon riding high over the forest cast a pale light on the tiny, open expanse. She slunk off to the side, just out of the light, concealing herself in a tangled mess of fallen branches. If she hid, held her breath when he passed, he might walk right by her. He’d thrown the flashlight back in the trunk when they got in the car so darkness alone might conceal her.

Before long, Phil stomped out of the woods into the clearing, huffing and puffing from the exertion, grumbling the entire way. His clothes were every bit as torn and dirty as hers by that point, but he seemed unaware of the state he was in. His focus was locked on something across the clearing that Debbie hadn’t noticed in her escape. She craned her neck in her hiding spot to see what had him so transfixed, but the tangled branches prevented her from seeing far enough to the right. She watched Phil cross the clearing with cautious steps until he too passed behind the limbs restricting her view. She considered emerging from her hiding spot enough to see what he was doing. An instant after she considered this, he came flying back into view with a slender, pale figure atop him. His fear-driven struggles so mirrored her own, that Debbie actually felt for him. Whoever had him pinned was clearly as much stronger and determined as he had been with her. Phil’s thrashing came to an abrupt end with a series of sickening pops of neck bones breaking as his attacker twisted his head almost completely around.

The frail figure dismounted Phil’s form, awkwardly angled from dying mid struggle, and began walking toward Debbie’s hiding place.

“Debbie,” a familiar, soft voice said. “I saw you hide.”

Debbie closed her eyes and shook her head. She buried her face in her hands, holding her breath in hopes it was simply a bluff, that her plan to remain hidden until danger passed might still be salvaged. After what she guessed was only a minute, her lungs burned from how long she held her breath without hearing anything the entire time. She opened her eyes with a renewed hope only to find Maggie Mayhew kneeling at the edge of the clearing, looking her directly in the eyes. Debbie screamed, to which Maggie made no reaction.

“I am like you, Debbie,” she whispered. Her voice was so soft, so uncertain, so sweet, and she looked so frail, Debbie wondered how she had ever been afraid of such a slip of a girl. “When they discovered what I was, they chased me into the woods. They were going to burn me to cleanse my sin.”

“Dyke,” Debbie whispered.

Maggie nodded.

“This is my home now.” Maggie held out her slender hand to Debbie. “Away from a world that would destroy us for what we are. It can be your home too.”

Debbie took the offered hand, reveling in the decision to survive. Maggie helped her from her hiding place. Debbie refused to look down at Phil’s ruined form. She locked her eyes on Maggie’s until a frigid, insistent kiss overtook her focus. The kiss broke and she cried into Maggie’s tangled hair, unsurprised or uncaring when she felt the mouthful of jagged teeth biting into her freely offered neck.

Part 2: The Pariah of Vigil’s Rest

Winter 1955 – Grace

1.

Death created some truly bizarre revisionist history in the wake of the disappearance of Debbie Poole and Philip Cox. The local newspaper caught on the story and dressed it up in the most compelling terms possible, painting Debbie and Phil as teen sweethearts who vanished in the prime of life, catching on the final picture of the couple in front of the Ferris wheel as though it were a totem, leaving enough of an opening for hope that they might have escaped the madman drifter to run away together. Enough people came forward, before and after the disappearance, to substantiate the presence of the drifter in town, giving validity to Debbie’s story in death while ignoring how many people openly questioned it when she was alive. The signs of the struggle found at Philip’s car, including a splattering of blood and a few torn buttons from Debbie’s clothes, led the police to believe the two planned to elope that night, but were interrupted in their lover’s escape by the drifter who somehow abducted them both. With this entirely flattering image of Debbie and Phil warmly accepted as fact by the population of Vigil’s Rest, a scapegoat was needed beyond the vanished drifter, and Grace fit the bill as Mr. and Mrs. Poole, being the grieving parents, were an unpopular choice.

Somehow the story became that Mr. and Mrs. Poole were trying to protect their daughter from the drifter who had attacked her, perhaps understandably going overboard in restricting her to her room, but Grace hatched a plan to help Philip set her free to run away together, and if she had just minded her own business, Debbie and Phil would both be alive and the drifter likely caught or moved on by then. Grace knew it wouldn’t do a bit of good to reassert her original position that Debbie made a pass at her and that she’d told Debbie’s parents and Pastor Gunderson as she thought a good Christian girl should, especially in light of the fact that Pastor Gunderson seemed to be one of the people contradicting her story. It was small town gossip at its worst, and Grace assumed the only way out was to weather the storm until people found someone else to vilify.

When the city council voted to rename the records wing of the library the Deborah Poole Reading Room after the deceased Harvest Festival pageant princess, Grace donated five dollars of her own money to help cover the renovations required. Even this act of contrition was taken with suspect motives as most people openly said it was nothing more than an act of a guilty conscience.

Grace held her head as high as she was able, rode her bike to her office job through the fall, eating her packed lunch alone on a park bench until the weather turned too sour to do either. As the approaching winter drove her from her independence, she began riding into town with her father despite the fact that he left for work an hour before she needed to be there and didn’t come home until well after dark, leaving Grace with a lot of time in town to be shunned.

With two weeks to Christmas, Grace held out hope for an end of the year bonus and a few days off. They were small dreams, but also the only ones she had left. On a crisp, clear, Friday morning, she met her father down at the garage while he warmed up his Cadillac. Mist hung low over the hills and treetops of rural Vermont. A tenacious early snow and abundant frost from the night before left the valley with a sparkling sheen. Grace blew warm air into her cupped hands, shifting from foot to foot in an attempt to keep warm. Her father, a stern, hard-edged man with a salt and pepper moustache above thin lips wore suits and hats everywhere, regardless of the occasion. Even in the cold of New England winters he refused anything but a stylish trench coat. Grace waited while he pulled the car out of the garage and then slipped into the passenger seat knowing he didn’t like waiting.

Her parents hadn’t seemed angry with her through the entire process of their daughter becoming the town pariah and Judas to the all American teens in love; they simply seemed very sad. Grace had grown accustomed to not speaking with her father during the car rides. He drove while she sat and looked out the window. The radio was never to be turned on when her father was behind the wheel, and so silence was all they were left with. They wound their way down the hill their large house on the outskirts sat upon, turning right on the highway that would take them into Vigil’s Rest proper.

“Your mother and I think it might be best if you moved in with your Aunt Lorna in New Haven after Christmas,” her father said, never taking his eyes from the road. “It’ll give you a chance to make a new start.”

Of all the things that had been said to Grace through the fall, and there had been some truly hurtful words hurled in her direction, this single comment from her father was by far the most damaging. She loved her Aunt Lorna and even liked New Haven from what little time she spent there, but it didn’t feel right that she should leave when she’d done nothing wrong.

“I told the truth and now I’m being punished for it,” Grace said, tears welling at the corners of her eyes.

“You know I don’t like talking while I’m driving,” her father said, putting an end to any further discussion of the topic.

Grace’s father wordlessly dropped her off in front of the stone office building on Main Street where she waited in front for another half hour before old Mr. Cavendish came along to open the accounting office. Her boss moved with the slow careful steps of an elderly man in constant fear of falling and breaking something. His back hunched him forward until he resembled a question mark. And his oversized bifocals refused to find purchase on his papery skin, threatening to slide down off his button nose whenever he looked in any direction but straight forward or even slightly up.

“How are you this morning, Mr. Cavendish?” Grace dutifully asked.

“As fine as can be expected, I suppose,” Mr. Cavendish replied nervously. His hands, which had something of a natural tremble anyway, were shaking with such force that morning that it took him several attempts to even get the key into the lock.

Grace held the door open for him, waited patiently, and then followed the bundled little old man up the stairs through the cold, lonely office building. She took his coat, hat, and scarf before hanging up her own. The tottering old accountant practically walked out of the coat when she grasped it, immediately making for his office without even bothering to smooth his frazzled white hair in the mirror that hung on the waiting room wall, which was his usual routine. Grace’s emotional state was fragile enough after her father all but asked her to leave the family home; she didn’t feel the need to go poking around in the old man’s personal affairs to see why her boss was behaving so strangely.

Grace hung her own jacket, scarf, and hat on the coat tree, checked her hair in the mirror for any errant runaways, and then set to the filing tasks left in her inbox. She made slow work of the stack, placing client information in the corresponding file cabinets based on whatever notes Mr. Cavendish had written on the outsides of the folder. It was mind-numbing work made all the more difficult by the high-heel shoes, nylons, and skirt she was required to wear. When she’d first started the job, falling over when attempting to hold a heavy stack of files while kneeling to get at the lowest drawers of the file cabinets was not an uncommon occurrence. She was usually left alone to her work though so it was never embarrassing, but for some reason, that morning, Mr. Cavendish followed her from a respectable distance as though he had something pressing to say, but couldn’t quite work up the nerve to say it. Finally, with an hour to go before her lunch break, Grace pushed the matter into the light.

“Is there something you’d like to say to me, Mr. Cavendish?” She didn’t mean to sound irritable or demanding, although she knew she probably sounded both.

“Yes, well, actually, yes,” Mr. Cavendish stammered. “You see, my son-in-law is going to be taking over the business after the New Year. I believe you’ve met him. And his wife, my daughter, is a little concerned with having someone as young and attractive as you working for her husband. I know it’s just a wife’s silly paranoia, but she is my daughter and I would like to accommodate her happiness if I can. Why don’t you tidy up a bit and then take the rest of the afternoon off? Have a nice long weekend before you finish up your last week here.”

Grace went from hurt by her father to fuming at her boss. Mr. Cavendish’s son-in-law, Heathcliff Oswald, was in his late fifties, bald, sweaty even in winter, and afflicted with a skin condition that left his forehead red and peeling. The notion that Grace would somehow find herself uncontrollably attracted to the ghoulish man and steal him from his dumpy wife was so far beyond preposterous it was insulting to all parties involved. She skipped the tidying up she’d been asked to do, grabbed her things, and exited the office with a slamming of the door that left the windows rattling.

The frigid, dry air outside did little to quash the fiery anger building in her. She would have to wait until 7 PM for her father to get done at the office before she could get a ride home. With no friends left, no job, and an entire town full of people with reproachful stares and disappointed shaking heads, she started to think it might actually be a good idea for her to go to New Haven for a fresh start. It seemed hurtful on the surface, but perhaps her parents were aware of how miserable she was and simply wanted to help her out. Grace could take a perceived slight with good intentions a lot easier than she could take much more of Vigil’s Rest.

She pulled her knit cap on tight and strode down the street toward the diner that used to be the hangout for her and her high school friends, but had since become a frightening fishbowl of social ostracization. She was going to have a hot chocolate and a piece of pie regardless of who looked at her funny. She strolled right into the diner, setting the little bell above the door into a ringing fit with how hard she pushed. She slid into one of the booths beneath an enormous window and situated herself with an “I dare you to ask me to leave” demeanor.

“What’ll you have?” Nora the waitress asked. It used to be she would chat up Grace about music and boys and movies. Nora was in her late thirties, unmarried, but still desperate to seem young, and to that point, Grace had indulged her. But since Grace was blamed by the whole town for Debbie and Phil’s deaths, all wells of friendliness had dried up, and Grace wasn’t in the mood to pretend anymore that Nora was anything but a spinster trying to recapture the past.

“Hot chocolate and a slice of pumpkin pie,” Grace said.

“To go?” Nora asked.

“I’ve taken my jacket off, haven’t I?” Grace sniped. “What do you think?”

The two older men who worked at the feed and farm supply store down the road were sitting at the counter. They both looked back over their shoulders after the exchange between Grace and Nora, lingering on Grace when Nora walked off to complete the order.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Grace growled at them.

The two men quickly turned their attention back to their cups of coffee.

Nora returned with a plain cup of hot chocolate, no whipped cream or marshmallows, depositing it in front of Grace with such force that a little sloshed out the side onto the saucer. “I can’t have you antagonizing the customers, missy,” Nora said.

Grace ignored her, touching her hand to the side of the cup placed in front of her. It was ice cold. “I said hot chocolate,” Grace said. “This is cold.”

“Aren’t you just the queen of everything?” Nora snatched the cup from the table, spilling even more of the lumpy, room temperature liquid in the process.

“You’re old enough to be James Dean’s mother,” Grace snapped back. “It’s pathetic for you to carry on about him the way you do.”

Nora fled from the exchange with the lion’s share of hurt feelings. Grace stood and began collecting her things, certain Dennis would be on his way out of the kitchen to ask her to leave. The portly chef was more than a little in love with Nora, even though she was a good seven years older than him and not remotely interested, but Grace had seen him throw a punch or two to defend her honor and didn’t doubt he’d throw her out once Nora told him what Grace said.

“Can’t blame the clients,” one of the two old men at the counter said, loud enough to be heard by everyone in the diner. “Who wants to buy dairy from a man who has a sexual deviant for a daughter?” Both older gentlemen turned to look at grace in unison, as if to make sure the comment had landed.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Grace furrowed her brow at them in a withering glare that didn’t seem to faze either of them.

“The way I heard it,” the other old man said, “the Corker girl wanted to sabotage the relationship because she was in love with the Poole girl.”

Before the comment could even sink in, Dennis and Nora emerged from the kitchen. The heavyset cook grabbed her by the arm and the back of the coat, roughly escorting Grace to the door held open by Nora. “She kissed me!” Grace shouted back at the two old men before being shoved roughly back onto the street.

“You want me to split so bad? You’ve got it, squares,” Grace shouted at the diner and street in general. “You couldn’t pay me to stay in this dump.”

She was starving in a way that only a big bag of movie popcorn could feed and needed her jets cooled in a way that only a double-feature matinee would. The movie theater wasn’t any nicer to her than anywhere else lately, but she just needed to get past the ticket booth and concession counter without blowing her stack at anyone and she’d have it made in the shade for four hours of cinematic bliss.

2.

Grace watched the double-feature, a few news reels, and some animated shorts for good measure, polishing off a large popcorn and some Milk Duds during. She walked out to the satisfying darkness that she came to associate with a day well spent at the movies. The clock on the top of the courthouse let her know it would still be another half hour until her father would be done with work, possibly even an hour considering he tended to stay late on Fridays as though he was going to miss the place until Monday.

Grace strolled the streets back to the office building of her former employment. She was a little chilly, but otherwise content in her new life direction and even a little glad for the firing from a tedious job she despised. Perhaps she would look for work in a flower shop or as a perfume counter girl at a department store when she got settled in New Haven. Rather than stand idly in front of the site of her former employment, she wandered across the street to the little park she used to eat lunch in. The benches all had a smooth sheen of ice from the melt off of the day refreezing when the sun went down and the fountain in the middle of the park, the one with the bronze statue of an angel blowing a trumpet called Vigil’s Hope, was drained and tented-over in translucent plastic sheeting to protect it from the ravages of a Vermont winter.

Grace sat on one of the benches ringing in the fountain, slipped her pack of cigarettes from her purse, and lit one up, blowing the smoke mixed with the steam of her breath up into the clear night sky. She cocked her head to one side, gazing at the statue of Vigil’s Hope in its plastic prison. When she’d first move to Vigil’s Rest she thought the bronze angel was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. The years hadn’t been kind to Vigil’s Hope though and she was beginning to show in spots of oxidation and weathering.

Grace glanced back over her shoulder to the front of the office building, lit up by the streetlights. Her father’s car wasn’t there yet. Sweeping her gaze back to front, she almost missed the figure standing on the edge of the baseball field. She glanced back quickly, but couldn’t be sure of what she saw. Grace flicked her cigarette into the snow beside the bench and began walking toward the fence separating the main body of the park from the playing fields and the woods beyond.

The figure, whoever it was, didn’t seem to be wearing winter appropriate clothes. The girl was kicking her way through the snow along the edge of the fields and the tree line with what looked to be bare feet. Grace glanced back to the street to look for her father’s car, again, finding it not there. She sighed and pushed open the wooden slat gate to allow her access to the trampled snowy field where boys had been having snowball fights until the snow became too dry and powdery for the activity anymore. Her shoes, already allowing far too much cold in for her taste, slipped along the packed snow, slowing her progress into the field. She didn’t know why she should care who was giving themselves frostbite; she was leaving town and that girl’s toes weren’t any concern of hers. Grace was so engrossed in watching where she was placing her own feet that she didn’t notice the girl had danced her way quite a bit to the right until she finally looked up.

“Hey!” Grace shouted to the girl, cupping her hands around her mouth. “You’re going to end up in Germsville skipping around in just a nightshirt.”

This caught the girl’s attention. She snapped her head around unnaturally fast, locking her eyes directly on Grace. Terror shot up Grace’s spine. It was Debbie. Grace turned to run. Her shoes slipped. She kicked them off to run across the snowy field in just her nylons, completely heedless of the cold. Her skirt restricted her from making full strides and her bare feet covered by quickly icing over stockings wasn’t significantly better than the shoes she’d abandoned. She didn’t know how it could be Debbie or what she was doing out, but the look of pure, animalistic rage painted across her former friend’s features scared the willies out of Grace. “Help me!” she screamed at the top of her lungs as she passed through the gate she’d left open leading back into the park. “Help…” was all she managed on her second try to scream as a white hand with a grip like steel clapped over her mouth.

Grace felt herself pushed forward with such force that she couldn’t even scramble to keep her feet under her. She hit the icy ground on her side and slid, coming to rest against the snow piled around the base of the fountain to hold the plastic sheeting down.

“You killed me,” Debbie snarled. When she spoke, her mouth opened enough to show off a ghastly set of sharpened daggers where once there had been such lovely, perfect teeth. “They were going to commit me, run electricity through my brain until there was nothing left, and all because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut.” On the final word, Debbie’s eyes took on a demonic red glow that grew with every step she took toward Grace.

“I’m sorry,” Grace pleaded. “I’m so sorry. Please…”

“I begged you to forget it,” Debbie said, nearly upon Grace; her hands were clenched in fists at her sides. “You betrayed me and now I’m dead.”

“I’m sorry!” Grace shielded her eyes from the increasingly monstrous appearance Debbie was taking on. With every word and every step the beautiful girl she’d known looked more and more like a monster from a creature-feature. “I did it because I was scared of what I felt when you kissed me!”

Debbie stopped in her tracks. “What?”

“I liked it, I didn’t want to, but I did,” Grace said. “I got scared and when I get scared I get mad, and I took it out on you, and I’m sorry for that—I shouldn’t have. After I left your place, I thought people could see it in me. I thought they could see that I liked it. I went to Phil because I thought if I did it with a boy, maybe even got pregnant, that people wouldn’t suspect me. He’d have to marry me, which would fix everything since you didn’t even want him anymore. I didn’t even know about the drifter until the next day. I’m so sorry he killed you.”

“He didn’t kill me,” Debbie said. Her voice sounded like the soft, sweet tone Grace once knew; she opened her eyes and looked up to find Debbie’s face had returned to human. Her former friend was every bit as beautiful as she once was, perhaps even more so with the lightening of her eyes and how flawlessly white her skin looked.

“Are you a ghost?” Grace asked.

“I don’t know what I am,” Debbie said. “The only person in a position to tell me what I am doesn’t like talking about it. I’m frankly a little lonely right now.” Debbie looked to be on the verge of tears, absently running the ends of the fingernails on each hand against each other.

Grace regained her feet, shaky at first, and took a step toward Debbie. “I know how that feels. I may as well be a ghost in this town now.” She took a step closer to Debbie, tilting her head a little to try to catch the other girl’s down turned eyes. “Were you going to hurt me?”

Debbie shook her head. “No. I was just frosted and wanted to yell at you.”

“Oh. That’s fair. I deserve it,” Grace said. “I miss you though. Nobody will catch a flick with me anymore.”

“I shouldn’t even be talking to you, talking to anyone really.” Debbie turned to walk away.

Grace, acting on some strange instinct to grab and hold something she’d thought she lost, reached out and caught Debbie’s wrist. “I mean it. I’m sorry,” Grace said. She let out a little nervous laugh and shook her head. It didn’t even matter what she said or who she told the truth to now; she’d told the truth before and was still punished for it, so she really couldn’t see how it would make a difference if she told one more truth to the ghost of her friend. “I meant the other part too. You’re the most, Debbie Poole, the absolute most, and when you kissed me, you spun my head.”

Debbie turned back, demurely tucking a few strands of strawberry blond hair behind her ear. “Really?”

“You were a radioactive paper shaker, a teen idol, and you wanted to make out with me,” Debbie said. “It was like crazy—like total wow. If I didn’t think we’d both get the royal shaft for the whole thing, I would have told everyone it was the most unreal thing that ever happened to me.” Grace let go of Debbie’s wrist and tried to sniffle back the growing tears with a nose already runny from the cold. “Like it matters now. I’m a total oddball fream, and you’re dead.”

Debbie ran an ice cold digit along Grace’s chin to turn her head back for eye contact. “It matters to me,” she said.

The honking of a big Cadillac horn tore Grace’s attention away back to the street. “My dad’s here,” Grace said. “I’ve got to split before…” When she turned back to where Debbie had been standing, she was gone. The crashing of emotions against one another, the adrenaline still coursing through her, and the time spent in the cold combined to make her shake all over. She had no idea what was happening to her, but she suspected she couldn’t take another day like that and survive it.

She left the shoes in the field with a dismissive wave of her hand. She wouldn’t need office girl work shoes anymore and there wasn’t anything Mr. Cavendish could say if she wore warm, comfortable shoes the following week since he’d already fired her. She turned and walked briskly to the blue Cadillac waiting for her. Inside the warm, comfortable cabin of her father’s car, she finally felt safe. He apparently took her makeup smears from stress crying as proof she had indeed been fired; his lack of comment on her shattered emotional state confirmed what she already suspected—he knew all along what was going to happen.

She reached over to the dashboard and slid the bar for the heater to the right until it blew hot air from beneath the dash over her frozen feet. She glanced up to him as he pulled away, practically daring him to say something to her about touching the precious controls on his Cadillac’s dash. He didn’t even look at her. She shook her head and resumed her normal position of leaning against the door, looking out the window as they drove.

3.

Grace struggled to sleep that night. She awoke repeatedly, rushed to the window, and looked out over the serenity of the rolling hills and woods leading down into the sleepy town. She wasn’t sure what she expected to see outside, but something kept drawing her to the window. When she awoke the final time, the sun was nearly free of the horizon, ending any interest in what might be outside.

Grace made her exhausted way downstairs. Her parents were already in their usual posts in the kitchen with her father at the head of the dining table, back to the bay window, paper in hand and her mother flitting through the kitchen, singing gospel songs to herself while she prepared breakfast. Grace took her spot at the other end of the table from her father, waiting only a moment before her mother deposited a cup of coffee in front of her and placed a kiss on the top of her head.

She loved her mother’s feminine charms, nearly eternal spring of optimism, and caring maternalism; Grace hated that she personally possessed none of these qualities. She was far more like her truculent father, which nobody, least of all Grace, thought was a good thing for a young woman to be.

She sipped her coffee, thinking about the day before, staring blankly at the black and white checkered pattern of the tabletop. She’d never really considered the question of whether or not she believed in ghosts. To that point, she hadn’t really had much experience with death. In truth, she’d always counted herself among the handful of people in town, along with Debbie’s parents, who believed Debbie and Phil were still alive somewhere, so she’d never taken the time to properly grieve. Their heated conversation the night before sure got the point across that Debbie thought she was dead though, which Grace figured probably wasn’t a put on. If she was in fact dead, ghost was the best explanation Grace could think of for why they were still able to talk.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” her mother asked. “You’re making some very strange faces.”

“I was just thinking about something,” Grace said, quickly returning her full attention to her coffee.

“Thinking too much will give you wrinkles,” her father said without lowering his newspaper.

“I guess it’s good that I’m thinking the right amount then,” Grace replied.

“Don’t sass your father,” her mother scolded her. “Eat your breakfast and get dressed. You’re helping me with housework today.” Her mother set a half a grapefruit and two soft poached eggs in front of her garnished with a single slice of toast.

“That’s it?” Grace said. “What’s he having?” She stood a little in her chair to see what was on the plate her mother was setting in front of her father. The dish was practically a platter it was so large and contained ham, bacon, hash browns, and three eggs over easy.

“He’s having what he’s having and you’re having what you’re having,” her mother said. “You need to keep your weight down and he needs to keep his energy up.”

Grace sat back down and glumly began poking at the slimy poached eggs until they’d both spilled their runny yolks across her plate, pooling around the base of the half grapefruit in a yellow slick. “I think I will go stay with Aunt Lorna for awhile,” Grace said. “A change of scene might do me some good.”

“I’m glad you came around to the idea,” her mother said as she busied herself in cleaning up the mess left from making breakfast. “Your father didn’t seem to think you were too keen on it yesterday.”

Aunt Lorna was her mother’s older sister, a war widow who lost her husband in the Pacific theater but never remarried, and a rigid, joyless school teacher. Whatever might happen to Grace in New Haven, it was not going to be fun or high times. “I didn’t think I really had a choice in the matter,” Grace said, “what with me costing daddy clients.” She scooped out an unreasonably small bite of grapefruit and chewed daintily at the bitter piece of mealy citrus.

This actually brought the front of the newspaper down just enough for her father to make eye contact with her. “Who told you that?” he asked gruffly.

“A little bird at the diner,” Grace replied. “Is it true?”

The newspaper returned to battlement position without answer. Grace’s mother touched Grace on the shoulder with a soapy hand. “You know your father doesn’t discuss business at the family table.”

“I’m going regardless,” Grace said. “It would have been nice to hear it from him though.”

“If you’re going regardless, I don’t see how it matters.” Grace’s mother forced a tightlipped smile and returned to the kitchen, singing a few lovely lines from Closer to Thee O’ Lord. “New Haven will have so many opportunities that you simply can’t get around here.”

The statement was unusually pragmatic for Grace’s mother; she was normally such a flighty romantic when it came to planning the future. “That’s true,” Grace said. “I was thinking maybe I could get a job as…”

“There will be college boys and business men galore for you to choose from.” She swooped in, scooped up Grace’s plate, and kissed her on the head again. “I’m so proud of you, leaving so much on your plate.”

Grace knew objecting wouldn’t do her any good. She would have to be hungry until lunch and hope to make up the difference then. “I guess I’ll go get dressed,” she said.

As soon as she was out of the kitchen and around the corner, she heard the newspaper rustle as it was set aside and heard her father’s fork hitting the plate with harsh gusto. She couldn’t even say for sure if she liked her father. The truth was, she hardly knew the man. Her older brother Warren had said almost those exact words to her when he left to join the army three years ago. Warren said if he died in combat, someone would have to deliver a letter to their father informing him that he had children and that one of them was dead. Grace hadn’t much cared for the joke—a little too true and morbid for her taste.

Grace only made it partway through getting dressed into a pair of ratty Capri pants and a denim work short when her attention landed elsewhere. Her old pompoms were out along with her cheer sweater, sitting on the wooden chair beside her vanity. She lifted the items one at a time to closely inspect each. The paper of the pompoms rustled with a familiar sound and the sweater felt as soft and inviting as it always had. She even found a few blades of grass around the bottom hem, likely left over from when their pyramid at the final home game toppled into a giggling mess of girls on the edge of the field. Grace plucked the blade of grass from the sweater and smelled it.

Debbie, the top of the pyramid always, had landed on top of her. The crowd thought the whole thing was a hoot and so did the cheerleaders. Grace remembered feeling very comfortable with Debbie lying across her stomach. She could feel the vibrations of her friend’s laughter against her ribcage. The single memory of that chilly October night a year prior excited her more than all the make out sessions she’d ever had with boys. Grace couldn’t even muster the usual self-loathing and recriminations she normally used to squash the feelings of lust she had for girls in general and Debbie quite specifically. When she tried to tamp down her desires with spite for what she was feeling, she only ended up feeling guilty for what she’d said and done to Debbie.

If Debbie had just waited until they were in New York, Grace might have reacted differently—she knew she might have. It wasn’t that Debbie wasn’t welcome; it was that Grace wasn’t ready. If she had only waited…

But Grace knew that was a lie and a lousy rat excuse for what she did. She didn’t want to be like she was and she really didn’t want Debbie to be that way. It was okay when she thought it was just her. She thought she could control the feelings as long as she was the only one having them. But Debbie, perfect Debbie, beautiful, talented, popular, and wonderful Debbie wasn’t supposed to be sinful and wicked like her—Debbie was supposed to be better than that! Grace hated her for not being perfection as she’d imagined it. She tossed the sweater back onto the chair and turned to make for the door.

Her hand stopped before it could reach the handle. Debbie was perfect and beautiful and kind and all the other good things too numerous to count, and she’d trusted her imperfect friend Grace with her darkly secret desires. No, it was more than that. Debbie had wanted to share them with Grace. Maybe she sensed Grace had those feelings too, but that didn’t seem likely since Grace couldn’t sense that Debbie had them. Debbie was brave and had thought Grace was special, and Grace was a cad who wasn’t strong enough to tell Debbie she felt honored to be the object of her affections. Grace sat hard on the floor, tears rolling freely down her cheeks. She had to tell her. Even if it was too late and Debbie really was dead, she had to tell her.

She heard her mother’s shoes outside her room and saw the little shadows they left beneath the door. Her mother, who had hearing to rival most sonar listening posts, always seemed to know when Grace was crying. Rather than rush in like Grace knew most mothers did, invading her space, bombarding her with questions, and generally making it all a lot worse, Grace’s mother always left her daughter to work through her emotional process alone and only ask later on what it might have been about. Grace appreciated that about her mother, although she would have to think of something else to tell her when she eventually asked what Grace had been crying about. Admitting she really wished she’d gone ahead and necked with Debbie when the opportunity arose that summer probably wasn’t the sort of thing that would be kept in confidence, even in mother-daughter emotional talks.

Debbie collected herself, dried her eyes, and pulled a scarf over her short hair to keep the dust and grime off. She thought again about what might have been if she’d taken Debbie up on the make out session, rather than slapping her and calling her names. How lovely it all might have been. Without the hatred and chiding she usually gave herself, the thought nestled warmly inside her, finding a place somewhere between love and lust, making Grace feel a little naughty, but more than that, relieved like she’d finally come clean after defending a very big lie for a very long time. If she got the chance, she resolved to tell Debbie’s ghost as well.

She threw open her bedroom door to approach the day with a new truth shining over her.

4.

Sleep was once again elusive despite working herself to near exhaustion that day doing laundry, cleaning floors, and polishing brass fixtures around the house. Grace didn’t mind the hard work or the fact that her mother became increasingly lazy as Grace picked up the pace. She didn’t even mind that her hands still smelled like furniture polish or that she had a lump on the back of her head from when she stood up into a drawer her mother left open above her while she was on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor beneath the lip of the counters. But she really wished she could at least sleep.

As with the night before, something kept calling her to the window. She rushed to the front window of her room, threw open the curtains, and stared across the empty expanse of their yard, down the hill to the farmland below, and on to the woods and town beyond. A low cloud cover hung over the scene, unlike the night before, holding in far more ambient light which reflected off the bottoms of the clouds and the snow on the ground to create something of a lingering glow. Rather than shut the curtains in a huff as she had the previous night, she sat at the window a moment, simply enjoying the serenity of her dark room and the peacefulness of a calm winter night.

A chill crept through the thin glass and around the edges of the window with the curtain left open. Grace glanced back to the chair next to her vanity where she’d replaced her cheerleading sweater that she assumed her mother had dragged out for possible boxing to be placed in the attic. The faint light coming in through the window illuminated the edge of the chair enough for Grace to find it in the dark. She padded over in bare feet and scooped up the sweater to wrap around her hands. She turned back to the window and her heart nearly leapt up her throat and into her mouth. Debbie was standing on the edge of the tiny expanse of icy roof outside the window, hands gripping the sill, staring into Grace’s room with a blank, lifeless expression on her face.

There was none of the energetic, survivalist fear from the night before. Grace simply froze, caught in the grips of a solid fright.

“Can you see me, Grace?” Debbie asked. Her voice sounded faint, barely above a whisper, or perhaps like she was actually very far away. Regardless of what created the thready quality to her speaking, it was entirely unsettling.

Grace bobbled her head in something of a noncommittal simultaneous shake and nod.

“Let me in, Grace,” Debbie said.

But she couldn’t have even if she wanted to. Her feet refused to move. Her fingers refused to unclench from their death grip on the cheer sweater. Indeed, she found she was even struggling to blink. The uncertainty of the night before all came rushing back to her. This was her friend, but at the same time, it wasn’t. The thing outside her window was Debbie, but it was also something else entirely, something that frightened Grace on a primal level harkening back to a time when mankind still feared that the sun might never rise when night fell.

“You have to invite me in,” Debbie said. The quality of her voice changed from distant and spooky to sultry and soothing. Grace looked into her friend’s beautiful blue eyes and listened to her sweet-as-pie voice as it took on an alluring quality Grace had never heard before. “You want me to come in, don’t you?”

Grace did, she really did. Suddenly, she couldn’t remember why she’d ever been frightened in the first place. She had things to tell Debbie, things she was concerned not five hours ago that she might never get the chance to tell her. And yet, there was Debbie, asking to be invited in, and Grace was being a clod about it. Grace wrapped her sweater around her shoulders and snuck to the window, unlocking the two latches at the top of the pane and then pushing it up slowly to avoid any creaks.

“You can come in, but we have to be quiet,” Grace said. “My parents still think you’re dead.”

“Thank you. I’ll be quiet.” Debbie crawled in through the window with remarkable agility and completely good to her word about the silence as she didn’t make a single sound on her way through the tiny window. She was dressed in the same nightgown, but now had a heavy woolen coat over the top of it. Her feet were still bare and looked a little muddy around the soles.

“You must be freezing.” Grace rushed to close the window and returned to Debbie who appeared to be a little nervous about suddenly being inside. Grace gathered up Debbie’s hands and rubbed them between hers, which only served to make Grace’s hands cold as well without seeming to do anything for Debbie’s.

Debbie cocked her head to the side in a puzzled way Grace had seen her brother’s border collie do when it was trying to figure something out. She slid her hands from Grace’s and reached up to touch the cheerleader sweater around Grace’s shoulders.

“I remember this,” Debbie said dreamily. “I had one just like it.”

“Yep,” Grace said with a grin. “Except yours had a ‘C’ stitched to the shoulder for captain.”

“It was fun,” Debbie said, a bittersweet smile spreading over her lips.

“It reminded me of the last home game,” Grace said. “Remember when our pyramid fell, and you landed on top of me? You were lying across my stomach, laughing, and…it felt right.”

“But you called me a freak when I…” Debbie pulled back, but Grace followed, regaining her clasped grip on Debbie’s cold hands.

“I was wrong,” Grace said. “You’re not a freak. You’re Beautiful. You’re my friend. I should have been honored that you would share that with me. I didn’t…couldn’t let myself feel lucky that you chose me until today and even now I think it’s crazy hearing myself say it. I told myself, and this is the living end, that if you’d waited until New York, I would have…I don’t know, but that doesn’t make up for it. I know it doesn’t. I just wanted you to know.”

Debbie looked entirely caught off guard. The confident and sultry quality her voice had contained in asking to be let in was gone and she looked as absolutely uncertain as Grace felt. “I went with you to those James Dean movies because I liked the way you would hold my hand when you were excited,” Debbie said with such earnest candor that Grace was overwhelmed by the equal exchange of honesty.

“I…I didn’t go to the James Dean movies because I had a crush on him,” Grace said hesitantly. An embarrassed smile and furious blush painted her face before she could even continue. “I went because I wanted, still kind of want, to be like James Dean.”

Debbie smiled, took a step back, covered one half of her face with her palm, and shook her head. When she tried to speak a stifled giggle came out instead. “You would be a gorgeous James Dean,” Debbie said when she finally regained her composure.

“As long as we’re sharing secrets, I’ve got one more for you,” Grace said. “After Christmas, I’m going to New Haven to live with my aunt.”

Debbie went from embarrassed and delighted to hurt beyond words. She immediately made a rush for the window, but Grace, expecting such a reaction, intercepted her, grasping her by the puffy arms of her overcoat. “No, no, no, listen to me,” Grace pleaded when Debbie was clearly going to get away. “I want you to come with me. I don’t care that you’re a ghost and that we’re both freams and that we’re going to have to think up a Moby Dick sized whopper of a story to tell my aunt to explain who you are—I want you to come with me.”

“New Haven?” Debbie stopped struggling. Grace thought she looked as though she’d been shoved out on stage in the middle of Hamlet after having memorized all the lines for Brigadoon; cues were still being given, but what Debbie thought she was supposed to say didn’t fit the context.

“I know it’s not New York, isn’t Barnard College, but it’s a start, a new start for us both,” Grace said repeating the script she’d rehearsed in her head the whole day while cleaning the house. Debbie might not know the lines, but Grace had it all planned out. “My aunt has this big townhouse. We’ll have to get jobs, but we can get jobs together. It’ll be a hoot, I promise!”

And that was it. That was all Grace had prepared to say. She thought Debbie would be ecstatic and say yes immediately, or she might decline in roughly the same way Grace had declined so long ago, but she definitely thought it would be one or the other. The stunned and muted response of utter confusion simply wasn’t something she’d prepared for. Grace opened her mouth to say more, but she didn’t know what else to say. She bit the edge of her lower lip, a rising panic welling up in her as she felt the opportunity to convince Debbie slipping away. She found herself mechanically wetting her lips with her tongue and then pulled Debbie in by the front of her coat and planted one on her. Debbie’s lips were frigid and initially unresponsive, but Grace was determined and reckless enough to overwhelm her. The crush kiss she’d seen in so many movies, the same one that worked for James Dean and Humphrey Bogart had to work for real when it came to convincing some girl that she was loved. If it didn’t really work, Grace had wasted a lot of time in movie theaters. Finally, Debbie relented, the kiss shifted, and they began to share a lip-lock only appropriate in the backseat on lover’s lane, something no movie house would be allowed to show. Grace wanted to prove to Debbie she wasn’t tentative about what they were doing and Debbie appeared to want to prove it right back. This is letting go, jumping in, accepting what I am, Grace thought, and in the moment, she thought it was the best feeling in the world.

Grace yanked Debbie’s coat off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. Debbie broke the kiss for an instant with the shock of the aggressive move to undress her. She looked like she wanted to respond in kind, but couldn’t find the will or perhaps the know-how.

Grace smiled and shook her head. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” she whispered to Debbie. Running her hand up through Debbie’s hair, she tilted her head ever so slightly, enough to expose her neck and earlobe. Grace kissed her neck, up onto her ear, and nibbled at the bottom of the lobe teasingly. She didn’t know if Debbie liked this, but Grace knew she sure did, and she had high hopes that all girl ears liked the same kinds of attention. Debbie did indeed appear to enjoy the ear nibbling as she let out the tiniest, most pitch-perfect gasp of pleasure Grace had ever heard in her entire life. She wanted to scream from the rooftops about how she, Grace Corker, had made the Harvest Festival Princess Debbie Poole make that beautiful noise of enjoyment. The moment after, when Grace’s entire body had been brought to the tingly cusp of full arousal at hearing Debbie’s single utterance of delight, her willing partner froze, apparently lost to the act entirely.

Grace pulled back and strained her neck to catch Debbie’s eye as her focus had gone entirely out the window quite literally. “What’s wrong?” Grace asked, suddenly fearing she’d done something horribly inappropriate and that Debbie’s noise had meant something entirely different than she’d interpreted.

“Nothing,” Debbie said, although she looked as though she’d seen a ghost herself. “I shouldn’t be here anymore though. I should…”

Grace glanced over her shoulder to the window. The lawn was empty. When she returned her attention to Debbie, she was already collecting her coat off the floor. “You can’t leave now,” Grace pleaded. “At least tell me if you’re on for New Haven.”

Debbie froze for a second as though listening to something else entirely—something Grace wasn’t privy to. Debbie shook her head to break the spell, slipped on her coat, and lunged up to grasp Grace in a surprisingly fast rush. She whispered into Grace’s ear so softly it was almost imperceptible. “Yes, to wherever with you, yes.”

Grace nearly collapsed when Debbie’s hands departed her shoulders. Debbie snuck back out the window with the same poise and alacrity she’d snuck in with. She slid down the tiny expanse of roof and bounded into the yard with the deportment of a ballerina. Grace watched her go until she was safely down the hill and presumably running down the road. Only after did she wonder if she should have given Debbie some warm shoes and socks. Grace rushed to her closet in search of winter boots and raced back to the window, knowing it would be completely frivolous to call after Debbie but hoping the gesture would still mean something when she relayed it later.

The boots tumbled from her hands when she saw the yard. A girl, a frail, blond girl was standing in the yard. Her hair half draped over her face, dressed in tattered rags that might have once been a white dress, and she was looking straight into the window, right into Grace’s soul. The madness in the lone eye not covered by the girl’s hair was undeniable and accompanied by an inhuman rage of startling intensity. The ancient part of Grace, the place where base desires like hunger and fear originated screamed to her that she must flee, that this was no girl, and that her death was at hand.

Grace screamed long and loud without any concern for damage done to her voice or ears. The scream was so real, so basic to human communication, that it roused both her parents within seconds, carrying the same message of fear to them. Within moments, her mother and father burst into her room. Her father was armed with a golf club; her mother’s hair still in curlers. They ran to her without knowledge of why she screamed, turned on the lights, checked the window, looked into the yard where she was staring and pointing as she screamed but saw nothing to cause their daughter’s hysteria. Grace’s mother cradled her near catatonic daughter until her screaming slowly fizzled. Grace’s father slammed the window shut and raced back to their bedroom for a gun.

By the time her father returned from investigating the yard with flashlight and hunting rifle, Grace was whimpering quietly into the crux of her mother’s arm, awkwardly cuddled on the floor in the center of Grace’s bedroom.

“I found fresh footsteps in the snow,” Grace’s father said. “What were you doing awake with the window open and your boots out?”

Grace heard him but couldn’t answer. All she could think of, all she could remember was the look in that girl’s eye and knowing she was going to die.

5.

Even in the harsh light of day, Grace was frightened. She left the lights on the rest of the night against her father’s wishes, and slept little or not at all, awaking at every creak or crack the house made until finally the sun came up and Grace wearily dragged herself down to the breakfast table. When she plopped down exhausted across from her father, he lowered the paper and leveled his steely gaze on her.

“The footsteps were small,” he said. “Were you sneaking out with a friend?”

“Henry, you know she doesn’t have any friends anymore,” her mother so helpfully reminded everyone.

“What’d you see outside?” her father asked, not to be dissuaded from his course of skepticism.

“A girl…” Grace said unthinkingly. Although, she didn’t think it really was a girl, but something else in the shape of one. She was certain of two things she had no cause to be certain of: it wasn’t human and it wanted to do her harm.

“Awful lot of hullabaloo over a girl,” her father said, resuming the wall of Sunday paper between himself and his family. “You may legally be an adult, but you still live under my roof and my rules, which means a curfew. Sneaking out will get your hide tanned.”

“He’s pulling your leg,” her mother said, placing a cup of coffee in front of Grace.

Grace snorted involuntarily. “No, he’s not.”

“If you want to stay home from church today, sweetie…” her mother began.

“She’s going,” her father finished.

“Now, Henry…”

“It’s okay, mom,” Grace said. “I want to go.”

Grace struggled to stay awake on the ride to church. The cloud cover from the night before was long gone and the heat pouring out of the Cadillac’s dash combined with the pleasant light to create a soothing effect. Once they arrived at church, everyone filed into the little white sanctuary dressed in their Sunday best beneath heavy winter coats with the exception of Grace’s father who wore only a trench over his suit. A few eyes followed Grace, accompanied by whispers. She couldn’t hear what they had to say, but she figured it could be her outburst in the diner, her alleged sexual deviance, or her getting fired, maybe all three.

Even on the hard, wooden pews of the church, with Pastor Gunderson droning on about something from the Old Testament, Grace was able to doze off a few times only to be awoken by a sharp jab from her mother’s elbow. Grace always awoke with a subdued start, and every time she glanced past her mother, she found her father sleeping away without any recriminatory elbows waking him. After the fourth time, Grace pointed to her father as if to say, “hey, jab him for once.”

“He works,” her mother hissed under her breath.

“So do I,” grace hissed back.

“It’s not the same thing.”

There was no point in arguing. Her mother had never had a job. She went from living with Grace’s grandparents to living with Grace’s father without a single step of independence between. From what Grace could tell, her mother had little or no idea what her father did at work all day. Moreover, she had no idea what Grace did at work all day although she assumed Grace’s father worked tirelessly at tasks too difficult and complex for her mother to even comprehend, and Grace must sit at a desk, doing her nails, and occasionally getting someone coffee as her mother couldn’t seem to imagine a woman doing anything else in an office.

Grace managed to muddle through the rest of the sermon. After church, when the congregation milled about within the sanctuary proper, spilling out into the front lawn area a little as well despite the cold, Grace sought out Pastor Gunderson. She caught him just from behind the pulpit, interjecting herself between him and a group of little old church ladies with no doubt a dozen or more clarification questions regarding his sermon. Grace didn’t have the time or patience for manners at that point, and she didn’t care that Pastor Gunderson saw what she did.

“I have a question, Pastor,” Grace said.

“Miss Corker, in God’s house we…”

“It’s about evil incarnate,” Grace said quickly.

This sparked a shockingly real reaction in Pastor Gunderson. He lit up with eager anticipation of a query regarding true evil manifesting and not simply the ways in which communists could be likened to the devil.

“Yes, yes, of course, we should speak in my office.” Pastor Gunderson ushered Grace toward the side door, giving the three little old church ladies a knowing nod and gentle gesture with his hand, palm-side down. They seemed to understand the nonverbal communication implicitly, voicing no further objection about Grace’s cutting ahead of them.

Pastor Gunderson opened the tiny little rectory door to his office and followed Grace inside. The office was as neat as a pin with very little in the way of personal effects. Instead of a desk, there were simply two chairs, a few bookcases, and two end tables with bibles sitting atop both. Pastor Gunderson took one seat and Grace occupied the other in the windowless little room.

“Now what is this about evil incarnate?” Pastor Gunderson asked, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

“I saw someone out my window last night, someone that frightened me more than I’ve ever been frightened,” Grace said. “I don’t think she was human.”

Pastor Gunderson furrowed his brow but didn’t speak right away. When Grace didn’t continue, he made a noncommittal grunt noise and sat back into his chair, tenting his fingers in front of his mouth. “What makes you think she wasn’t human?”

“One second she was there, and then in the next she wasn’t,” Grace said, suddenly thinking she’d made a mistake in bringing the quandary to him. “Plus, the way she looked at me, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t human!”

“With the tragic death of Deborah Poole, many girls around your age have had struggles with seeing people outside their windows at night. These apparitions usually turn out to be nothing more than nightmares brought on by an overactive imagination and a healthy fear of unfamiliar men because when they’re investigated…”

“My father did investigate,” Grace pleaded, tears springing up at the corners of her eyes. “He said he found footprints—a girl’s footprints outside my room.”

“A girl’s footprints…” Pastor Gunderson harrumphed. “There might also be a temptation to create a hoax of some kind, some girl who is evil incarnate to gather sympathy and attention at a time of social struggle for someone like yourself. Perhaps faking these footprints, perhaps with your own two feet, perhaps with the shoes you had in your hands when your parents discovered you. Your mother told me everything this morning before the sermon. She’s very worried that you might be attention seeking.”

A flip switched in Grace, the usual one she knew she got from her father that made her lash out, overreact, and become very cross with people when they questioned her. “Fine, why don’t you tell me why you lied to the newspaper about what you were really doing at the Poole’s house the night Debbie disappeared? Why did you tell people that you never talked to me that afternoon? Why did you lie, Pastor?”

“We’ve been over this, Miss Corker.”

“You were going to have her committed. You were going to have them give her electroshock!” Grace stood, trying her best to loom over the much bigger, much taller Pastor Gunderson, which only worked as long as he remained seated.

“How did you know that?” All the blood instantly drained from his face. He’d told her he would go to the Poole’s and counsel them on how to help Debbie get over her sexual perversions, but there were only three people left alive who would know what the real plan was, and he’d already discussed the extreme need for silence with the Pooles and they seemed more than willing to behave as though the subject of committal had never come up.

“It doesn’t matter how I know,” Grace said. “It doesn’t even matter that I do know since nobody would believe me anyway. I just wanted you to know that someone else out there knows what you really wanted to do. I may be an outcast, but you’re a monster.” Grace stormed out of the office leaving the Pastor stunned in his seat. She was so possessed by her self-satisfaction that she almost didn’t notice her father standing outside the door until she nearly collided with him. He had a small, bemused smile on his face, and it struck Grace that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him smile.

“Bless your mother for trying her best to raise you right, but you turned out mostly me,” her father said, the knowing smile never fading. He wrapped his strong arm around her shoulders and guided her away from the office. “That sanctimonious idiot deserved all that and a little more, but we’ll skip telling your mother the content of your conversation with him since she still seems to think he’s worth a damn when it comes to the man upstairs.”

“Do you believe me?” Grace asked. She didn’t want to push her luck with what was probably the first touching moment she’d had with her father since she was a child, but she had to know if anyone was truly on her side.

“Your desperation in bringing your case to that horse’s ass is more than enough proof for me,” her father said. “Let’s go buy you a jelly donut, kiddo—your mother’s weigh-ins be damned.”

Grace’s father sent her mother along with the woman’s rotary club, saying they’d pick her up back out in front of the church by 3 PM. Grace’s mother asked what they would be up to, to which Grace’s father said it was father-daughter stuff she wouldn’t understand. They walked over to the diner, the same one Grace had been thrown from a few days past, and strolled in like they owned the place. Grace knew her father was one of the most important men in town and commanded respect both from his war record and his entrepreneurial vigor. Nobody would whisper about Grace while he was there and Dennis and Nora would be on their best behavior under the withering stare of her father.

He ordered jelly donuts, one for each of them, and two cups of black coffee to go with them. Nora was all smiles and good manners as she fetched the food and drinks. Grace’s father slowly, deliberately, with steady hands rolled two cigarettes from the leather pouch kit produced from the interior pocket of his suit jacket. He handed one to Grace and placed the other in his mouth. He produced the Navy issue Zippo lighter from the exterior breast pocket of the suit, lit his own cigarette and then lit Grace’s.

“My PT boat was part of a patrol flotilla in the Mediterranean hunting for the last of Hitler’s oil tankers coming back from Africa,” he began, focused more on the lighter in his hand than Grace. “The ones we’d hit to that point were half or more empty. They usually sank without much of a struggle. It was nighttime when a radar cruiser picked up a target for us. The first two ships of the three were like the rest, mostly empty and soft for the picking. But the third, the one my boat hit, was full. I mean to the brim full of diesel fuel. We came in close enough for a knife fight expecting it was like the first two. It spilled on the first two passes hits, blew on the third, and spread fire on the water when my boat’s torpedo’s hit home.” A pronounced shake entered her father’s ineffably unshakable hands. “You’ve never seen anything like it. Waves on fire with pyres taller than ten houses, black smoke so thick it blotted out our spotlights to a dozen feet at most, and we were stuck right in the middle of it. It was the most frightened I’ve ever been and likely ever will be. I don’t know how we found our way back out of that ocean of fire when nobody else made it, but we did. When the fire washed over us, socked us in for what we all thought would be the end, most of my crew had the same look on their faces that you had last night. I don’t know what you saw out that window, but I know the fear was real.” Her father clamped his cigarette between his lips, set the Zippo aside, and reached into one of his pant pockets. He withdrew his Shur-Snap push-button fisherman’s knife. He hit the button to extend the spring-loaded blade, and slid it across the tabletop to Grace. “What happened to the Poole girl isn’t happening to my daughter. You get chased by a man with ill-intent, you let him get close enough to think he’s got you, then you extend the blade, aim for the softest part of him you can reach, thrust in, twist the blade, and pull it back out. The inner thigh works well. There’s a big artery in there that this knife will reach.”

Grace reverently held the knife the way she’d seen her father and brother hold the same fishermen’s knives they both had. Her father nodded to her that she was wielding it correctly. She pressed the release button and folded the blade back into the handle.

“The Rutherfords on your mother’s side are all soft New Haven folks with even tempers and weak stomachs, but you’re a Corker from a long line of Maine men and women who carved life from the tall timbers and pulled food from a violent, unwilling ocean,” her father said. “Don’t you forget that when the small minds of the small people in this town endeavor to drag you down and make you feel as small as they are.” After stubbing out his cigarette, eating a bite of donut, and sipping his coffee, her father went back to being the taciturn man she’d always known. “Finish your donut, kiddo. We’ve got to get back to your mother.”

Grace slipped the knife into her purse in a slot meant for an eyelash curler, but with the easiest access of anything inside. It was probably the most words her father had ever said to her in one sitting. They ate donuts, drank coffee, and smoked hand rolled cigarettes in silence for another half hour before he paid the tab, slid from the booth, and strolled to the door with her walking at his heels. It felt good to imagine that she was cut from the same wood as such a great man; it felt even better to hear him say so.

6.

She slept better that night, perhaps through sheer exhaustion or perhaps because she had a knife now and the knowledge her father took her concerns seriously. Sleeping under the same roof with such a stout man put a little confidence in her that the slender thing shaped like a girl who had stood in her yard wouldn’t fair very well against her father. Still, she slept with the spring-loaded fisherman knife on her nightstand.

The following morning’s breakfast and ride to work were back to routine. She talked with her mother while her father read the paper. The car ride was silent as usual. But she felt better knowing she only had a week’s work left at the job she didn’t like. This freedom on the horizon sped the day along until she was freed from her duties at 4 PM when the old accountant began to get hungry and sleepy.

She strolled the quiet streets of Vigil’s Rest in her heavy winter coat, admiring all the Christmas decorations in the shop windows along Main Street. In her coat pocket where she’d casually stuffed her hands, her right hand was wrapped around the handle of her new knife. She mentally rehearsed drawing the weapon on a would-be attacker, specifically the girl shaped creature that had frightened her so.

The setting sun signaled to Grace that she should head back to the front of the office building to wait for her father. He would be another hour or so depending on his day, and so she wandered over to the park to sit on her usual bench and smoke a cigarette beside the plastic tented fountain.

She smiled and stubbed out her cigarette in the snow piled around the base of the park bench. Debbie was sitting on the other end of the bench as though she simply materialized there. The trick didn’t have the same frightening edge it did the first few times as Grace had already come to terms with Debbie being a ghost of some kind.

“We’re becoming proper mushroom people,” Debbie said with a shy smile.

“I was starting to feel clutched with how often you vanish on me,” Grace said.

“Sure, but you know I’m earthbound enough to come back,” Debbie replied.

“I’ve got something for you,” Grace said.

“Likewise.”

Grace slipped an envelope from her pocket and slid it across the icy bench toward Debbie. “Cast an eye on those.”

Debbie picked up the envelope, recognizing it from when she’d last bought a Greyhound ticket. Inside were two bus tickets to New Haven. “Next Saturday,” Debbie murmured, reading the date off the tickets.

“Yep, five more days and we’re splitsville.” Grace slid a little closer on the bench. She shook off the possible negative connotations of Debbie handing back the tickets, and tried to keep the mood light. “So, what do you have for me?”

Debbie smiled, reached into the front pocket of her coat and withdrew a little silver locket in the shape of a heart. “My mom gave it to me for graduation,” she said. “I think she wanted me to put Phil’s picture in the other side, but I never felt like it belonged there.” Debbie gently pried open the little heart and showed it to Grace. “My picture is already on one side, but I didn’t have a picture of you. I figure you can put your own picture in there and maybe wear it.”

“Maybe definitely I’ll wear it!” Grace turned around slightly on the bench to allow Debbie to clasp the locket on her. Debbie’s hands were ice cold against her skin as she slid the locket around her neck. Grace turned back around, tilted her chin up a little, and displayed her neck with the silver locket around it. “How does it look?”

Debbie didn’t answer right away although she clearly was making a close study of the jewelry. After the silence grew to the point of uncomfortable, Grace cleared her throat and Debbie snapped out of whatever daze she’d fallen into. “Oh, it looks beautiful,” Debbie said.

Grace made an obvious show of looking around to see if the coast was clear, although she actually did a fairly thorough job of making sure they would be alone when she’d selected the spot, before she leaned in and whispered to Debbie, “I’ve wanted to kiss you since you sat down.”

“You must think I’m fast, and you’d probably be right.”

They met in the middle despite Debbie being the inviter. This kiss started soft and sweet with a little edge of reticence on both sides. As their kiss intensified, their concerns over their somewhat public display melted under the heat of the kiss. They nuzzled closer to one another pawing awkwardly at each other’s winter coats. The kiss slowly fizzled when it became clear they were exciting each other unduly and there wasn’t really anything else they could do on the park bench in the dead of winter without risking frost bite or arrest. Debbie rested her forehead against Grace’s.

“You are the absolute most, Grace Corker” she said with an infectious smile.

“Can you meet me here after work?” Grace asked.

“Every night until I meet you at the bus station,” Debbie said.

“You’ve got me real gone.”

“Likewise.”

They kissed briefly again before Grace pulled herself from the bench to go wait under the street light for her father. She glanced back to the bench near the fountain only to find Debbie was gone. Five days was too long to run away with Debbie and twenty-four hours was too long to wait to see her again. Grace pulled the locket up from the front of her shirt and opened it to gaze at her picture. Even tiny and in black and white, Debbie was beautiful.

Grace practically floated the whole way home and all the way through dinner, which seemed to please her parents that their formerly gloomy daughter was perking up. Grace was giddy, far too giddy for easy sleep, and once again she found herself waking up to check the window in hopes of Debbie being there waiting for her. The first time she checked, the night was empty. The second time Grace peeked out the curtains to the front yard, her heart froze. The terrifying girl was back, standing in almost exactly the same spot, glaring up at the window despite the shades being drawn. She still had the murderous intent although now her hair was pulled away enough from her face to see both crazed eyes. Grace swallowed hard, determined to let her father’s words be true about her. She was strong, from a line of strong people, and even if she was afraid, she wasn’t about to let the monster in her yard know that. She threw open the curtains and looked with unabashed disdain down to the girl shaped creature. Their eyes met and it took everything in Grace not to look away.

“Fuck you,” Grace whispered, flipping off the girl with enough emphasis to make her point clear even across the distance between them. “I’m not scared of you.”

The girl shaped creature snarled, its face contorting in inhuman ways to display a mouth full of jagged teeth, eyes flashing angry with a demonic white light. It made a screech sound reminiscent of a bat, but much louder and larger. Despite her knees weakening, every hair on her body standing on end, and an overwhelming urge to wet herself, Grace stood her ground. It took everything she had to pull it off, and she even channeled a bit of James Dean to make it stick, but she managed to simply shake her head with an undeniable air of calm hanging around her.

The creature howled again and bounded away into the night, running with an oddly stilted gait as though the changes to her face weren’t the only ones that had taken place to effect the hideous screech. With the monster departed, Grace fell to the floor, clutching her thundering heart. She managed to coax herself back into bed, clutching her knife, eyes locked on the window that she couldn’t bring herself to draw the curtains on again. Even with her back pressed against her bedroom wall and her knife between her and the window, sleep was elusive and fraught with nightmares.

7.

The week wore on without further nocturnal incident. After work, she sat on the bench waiting for her father until Debbie arrived. They spoke, although never about the girl creature on Grace’s lawn, and kissed, and held hands. It was the loveliest time in Grace’s life as far as she was concerned.

The locket and the knife became like totems for Grace. Neither was ever far from her person. She slept with them, bathed with them, ate with them, and always had both within handy reach.

It only took her a night to select a picture of herself for the other side of the locket; apparently her mother had been planning for just such a request and had many photographs of various sizes already available. When she asked to see the locket in question, Grace simply said it was something she wanted to keep in mind for New Haven. Grace’s mother said that was very smart and provided Grace with an envelope of possible pictures. When Grace showed Debbie the picture, one of her in her cheer sweater, she stated she couldn’t have imagined a better choice.

Grace’s bedroom quickly moved from a state of being lived in to boxed for storage and set aside in luggage for travel. Grace was no stranger to moving as her father had moved them fairly routinely most of her life, first with the Navy and then for building his businesses. Grace had no particular attachment for the room, the house, or the town, save Debbie, and she was taking that with her.

Grace talked on the phone with her Aunt Lorna a few times during the week. Her aunt seemed genuinely excited about the prospect of Grace coming to live with her. It wasn’t simply a matter of familial obligation or money woes creating the need for a tenant; Aunt Lorna said she’d been increasingly lonely and could really do with some company. Grace asked her if it would be alright if one of her friends moved in as well. Lorna cheerily exclaimed the more the merrier so long as they didn’t mind sharing a room until the sewing room could be converted to another bedroom. Grace knowingly stated she didn’t think either of them would mind that one bit.

Grace began to wonder what a ghost ate, and this led to wonderings of whether or not Grace was the only one who could see Debbie. In all their talks, the semantics of what Debbie was and how she functioned never really came up as it all seemed such unsavory talk and their time together was so limited. On Friday morning, Grace resolved to ask Debbie a few of the harder questions that night.

She waited on their bench after work, smoking a cigarette and watching the sun fade over the tree line of Vigil’s Wood. She didn’t want to walk the town anymore. She’d long since said goodbye to anything that mattered to her and she didn’t want to waste a minute with Debbie should she arrive at the bench first. As soon as the last color of the day faded from the sky, Grace expected to find Debbie beside her, but instead, an ill wind blew harsh across the park, threatening to tear the plastic sheeting from the fountain.

“You can’t take her from me,” a girl’s voice, made hollow and inhuman followed the wind.

Grace leapt off the bench and searched the area for the source. The girl shaped creature was standing not twenty feet away, hands held in gnarled claw shapes at her side, the same deranged, murderous look in her eyes. Until that moment, Grace hadn’t really connected the two occurrences in her mind. Of course the girl was talking about Debbie—Grace couldn’t believe she’d missed the obvious thread between the events.

“It’s not up to either of us where she goes,” Grace said, trying desperately not to sound frightened although every shred of her wanted to run screaming.

“It’s up to me!” the girl screeched.

She rushed across the park to Grace. In the blink of an eye, her hands were around Grace’s throat. In her panic-addled brain, Grace thought they couldn’t possibly be hands around her neck. They were too strong, too rigid. She thought it must be a metal vice of some kind. Air was becoming precious and Grace knew she was done if the vice stayed on her throat. She slipped the knife from her pocket, pressed the button to extend the blade, and jabbed the knife into the girl’s armpit. She twisted once and yanked the blade back out. The girl shrieked, this time in pain rather than anger. Air burned down Grace’s bruised windpipe, restoring lucidity almost immediately.

She could run, part of her wanted to, but she was angry, blindingly angry and knew she had to give more before fleeing. Grace lunged forward, brandishing the knife at the creature who was looking more and more monstrous by the second. The creature apparently hadn’t expected this. Her hands came up to defend herself a moment too late, and Grace’s second thrust found its mark with, burying the knife into the girl’s right eye. Grace stepped through the thrust until the blade hit bone; she grasped the knife with both hands and twisted hard several times before pulling the knife free with most of who knows what still clinging to the serrated back of the fisherman’s knife.

The creature stumbled back, half blind, grasping at its gushing socket. Grace now turned and ran. She screamed for help, fleeing toward Main Street where she hoped someone would still be around. She cut across 1st Street, finding no one, and turned right to continue on to Main. At the end of the street, eye still missing, blood streaming down the side of her contorted face, was the creature. Grace skittered to a stop, changed directions and tried to run back the way she came. In a flash the creature was there too. Grace opened her mouth to scream for help again, but the creature’s hand found her throat.

She tried for another stab at the monster’s remaining eye, but this time the girl was ready, easily swatting away Grace’s hand, knocking the knife painfully from her fingers. She felt her feet lift off the ground, suspended entirely by her neck. She choked and gasped as the imperfect, yet incredibly painful grip didn’t entirely cut off her airway. All her kicking, clawing, and struggling came to an abrupt halt when the creature thrust her free hand directly into Grace’s chest. It hurt more than she thought anything could and suddenly she was choking on her own blood. The monster twisted the hand inside her with willful glee written obviously across her hideous features. Grace considered it a blessing when her mind began shutting down. She could still feel the creature digging around inside her and she knew it still hurt, but it was almost as though her body was no longer hers and she was quickly gaining distance from it.

The monster recognized this loss of attentiveness in Grace’s eyes, and removed her hand. Grace was vaguely aware she was being dragged by the foot toward the woods although this too she could no longer feel through the numbness spreading across her body. She watched the night sky passing above her, wishing she could find the breath through the blood filling her mouth to call out to Debbie who would no doubt wonder where she’d gone.

Part 3: Slumber in Broken Earth

Winter 1955 – Debbie

1.

Debbie stood at the bus station for hours, concealed by shadows, heart full of dwindling hope. When the last bus for New Haven departed, she continued to wait until the last departing bus going anywhere was gone. Still, with the bays empty, Debbie waited.

Eventually Maggie came to collect her and it was truly a collecting as Debbie was well within a heartbreak that was certain to leave her exactly where she sat until who knows what would happen to her. Maggie guided her away from the bus station, careful to keep her concealed even at that late hour, until they were safely back in the woods. Debbie couldn’t tell Maggie that Grace hadn’t come, although she doubted she needed to. She’d told Maggie she was leaving, to which Maggie cryptically said she had her doubts.

“She’s no good,” Maggie whispered to Debbie. “A girl like that, someone who would betray a friend, she’s no good.”

Debbie didn’t want to believe her. She resolved herself to go back to the bus station the following night, in case she’d gotten the date wrong, or Grace had misspoken. She resolved to go back every night if needs be; better still, she would go to Grace’s house that night to confirm that she hadn’t left yet.

Maggie talked her down, talked her into coming home as the sun was coming up. Debbie reluctantly let herself be led. Maggie was being remarkably kind to her, which was unusual in light of how truculent she usually was. Maggie lowered Debbie into the earthen tomb along the bottom of the stone hut they shared and pulled the shale slab over the opening so she might rest in the lone protected slot within the home they shared.

The stone hut was old, older than the state of Vermont, Maggie had claimed. The dug out hole in the deep clay ground was once a root cellar or pantry of some kind, Debbie had guessed, but seeing the shale slab, bigger than she was, being used as the cover for the hole in the cabin’s floor, Debbie began to doubt her original assumption. The darkness, the rich smell of earth, and the safety provided by the stone above her was all remarkably comforting. It should have felt like a tomb or a cage, but Debbie knew she could move the shale slab if needed, she was that strong now, and that dissolved any feelings of being trapped.

The hiding hole, the shallow grave that was the stone hut’s cellar, was safe. Maggie showed Debbie repeatedly upon her first arrival that it couldn’t even be seen once the slab was in place. Men could come during the day to burn them as witches, but if they were hidden in the cellar, they wouldn’t be able to find them. If the men were foolish enough to come with torches at night, they would kill them all, Maggie said with her demented grin. Debbie didn’t like the idea of being burned as a witch or killing men who came into the woods at night.

Reluctantly, Debbie found sleep, her heart aching with rejection and disappointment.

2.

The following night, Debbie slipped from the crypt beneath the stone cabin. The last scraps of light, broken by the naked trees of the forest, still trembled at the threshold of the cabin’s door-less doorway whenever a winter breeze would blow the limbs of the trees. She waited until the tiny golden shapes of light on the floor faded completely before emerging from the cabin.

Maggie was nowhere to be seen or felt. Beyond simply seeing or hearing Maggie, Debbie found she could get a general idea of where Maggie was or what she was doing simply by thinking about her. Most of the time Maggie was angry, hurt, scared, or doing something fairly unspeakable; Debbie began shutting out thoughts of Maggie as much as possible.

Debbie resolved to check Grace’s house first for her and then wait at the bus station if she wasn’t at home. She started off through the woods toward the northwest where the forest nearly came up to the edge of the Corker property. She didn’t make it far into the gloomy blackness of the ancient forest before she got the strange sensation she was being followed and not by Maggie.

Something small and frightened was following her from a respectful distance. She couldn’t see or hear her tiny stalker, but she could feel it on the edge of her perception like a vague premonition of danger. She whirled around and took several strides back in the direction she’d come. For a brief flash, she caught a glimpse of the shadow of a child among the trees. The existence of a shadow in the lightless forest didn’t make sense. She chased the shadow farther, dodging between trees, gaining ground on the tiny stalker until she saw that the shadow had no corresponding body to cast it. The shadow racing along the trunks of trees and snowy forest floor was acting independent of a child or source of light.

Debbie stopped in her tracks, her bare feet finally crunching down through the frozen top layer of snow. She heard a child’s voice giggle from behind her. She spun to find source, spotting another shadow of a child, and then another, and another. They were surrounding her but without apparent malevolent intent. They danced and played with one another, beckoning her with their ethereal hands to join them.

“Who are you?” Debbie whispered.

She didn’t know if they could answer or even hear her. She took several steps toward one of them, but they parted before her, racing out of range again. Rather than continue the chase, Debbie ducked behind a tree. She waited until the haunting children’s laughter came closer to her hiding spot. When she thought they were close enough, she jumped out. The little shadows screamed with childish glee and fled again.

Debbie knew the shadow children would frighten most people, but she actually thought they were kind of cute in a strange way. She smiled and waved to them. The little shadow children waved in reply. They spotted something else and fled. For the first time that evening, Debbie sensed Maggie. She turned away from the fleeing forms of the shadow children to find Maggie had indeed snuck up behind her.

“I thought you would be at Grace’s by now,” Maggie said.

“I was going there, but then I saw…nothing,” Debbie said. She didn’t think Maggie would believe her if she told her what she actually thought she saw.

“They’re the orphans,” Maggie said. “Scavenger spirits of dead Indian children mostly. Don’t worry about them—they’re afraid of us.”

Maggie’s assessment didn’t sit right with Debbie. The shadow children did seem to be afraid of Maggie, but seemed more curious when it came to Debbie. Scavengers stuck out to her though. “Why do you call them scavengers?”

“They clean up what we don’t eat unless we mark them as ours,” Maggie said cryptically.

“Mark them?”

“With totems and straw dolls,” Maggie explained. “I know you’ve seen them. Why do you ask so many questions?”

Debbie indeed had seen the strange pagan totems and straw dolls Maggie made and placed throughout the woods. She hadn’t really asked what they were for or why Maggie kept making them—they were such bizarre little things that Debbie simply suspected they were part of Maggie’s madness.

Debbie could sense she was starting to get on Maggie’s nerves as she usually did, but she had to ask one more question. “Why are they afraid of straw dolls?”

“Because they’re the foolish spirits of foolish children,” Maggie snarled. “They were lured to their deaths by the promise of dolls and other trinkets.”

“Lured by you?”

“I would never kill a child,” Maggie growled. Her face was beginning to take on the trappings of the monster within. The angrier she became the less human she looked. “Go on your worthless errand to pine after a girl who wouldn’t even say goodbye before abandoning you, but don’t say I didn’t warn you—that girl is no good.”

Maggie vanished as quickly as she’d arrived, leaving Debbie alone and raw from the verbal lashing. She didn’t want to think Maggie was right about Grace, but the small part of her still hurting from Grace’s rejection of her initial advances agreed with Maggie and this small part was finding its voice. She suppressed the growing doubts with the ultimately ungrateful part of her that wanted to leave Maggie. Of course Maggie didn’t want Grace to be any good—it would mean Debbie would leave. Debbie ran through the woods as fast as her feet would carry her; if she found Grace, left for New Haven, she could prove Maggie wrong and be free.

3.

Grace’s house was dark when Debbie arrived. She was reticent to even come to the yard at first, but eventually forced herself to stand in the same holes in the snow she’d made before. She stared up at Grace’s window on the second floor, willing her to come to it. She next checked around the sides of the house, unsure of what she thought she would find. It was all pretext and she knew it. Her real goal would be to see inside Grace’s room, to see for sure if she was in there or if it was empty and unlived in. Debbie scaled the beams supporting the roof over the porch and snuck along the narrow bit of awning to Grace’s window.

The contents of her room said nothing definitive. Some things were packed and some things weren’t packed yet. It didn’t look definitively lived in or vacated. Debbie dug her nails into the white paint of the wooden frame and tried to pry the window up, but it was locked. She tapped lightly on the glass with her fingernails, but nothing stirred inside the room. The bed was made and empty, the door into the hallway left slightly ajar. Debbie was out of ideas.

She slid down from the roof and wandered back toward the woods. There wouldn’t be any point in going to the bus stop. Grace’s luggage was still in her room but Grace wasn’t. None of it made any sense.

4.

Maggie began giving Debbie space, only seeing her before the coming dawn to slide the slab over her cellar tomb and then occasionally to remind Debbie how lousy of a thing it was for Grace to leave without at least saying goodbye. Maggie almost always caught up with Debbie on her way to Grace’s house to remind her.

Debbie peered into Grace’s window again and again without ever seeing even the slightest change in the contents. She’d catalogued the things throughout the room, their exact positions, and their arrangement until she was certain she would know if even one sock was placed differently. But none of it ever was. It was as though Grace’s room was as frozen in time as the stone cabin in the woods.

Debbie’s heart hurt with longing and a deep depression, far deeper than any sadness she’d felt since her death. It built in her like heavy, wet snow falling every night. It was after New Years Day; Debbie knew that much from the courthouse bell being rung on midnight, something that only ever happened after the countdown to the New Year. She snuck back to Grace’s house for her nightly visit, but this time, she let herself in through the unlocked backdoor. She snuck up the darkened stairs letting out only the tiniest creaks along the way, down the hall past Grace’s parent’s room where they both snored softly, and slipped into Grace’s room. It was so foolish, so dangerous, and so pointless to be there, but Debbie didn’t care about any of that anymore.

She took up Grace’s old cheer sweater, which was sitting on the top of one of the boxes nearest the closet, and crawled onto the made bed, curling around the soft sweater, holding it to her nose to inhale the lingering scents Grace left behind.

Debbie didn’t know how long she’d stayed, and she hadn’t even realized she’d fallen asleep until someone was shaking her awake. For a panicked moment, she forgot where she was, thinking someone had crawled into her crypt beneath the stone cabin to attack her. As her mind awoke, she came to the even scarier realization of where she had fallen asleep. She nearly screamed instinctively, but a hand clamped over her mouth before she could.

Maggie’s angry eyes flashed at her, narrowed and insistent. “We have to get out of here,” she hissed. “It’s almost morning.”

Debbie nodded her understanding and Maggie removed her hand from her mouth. Debbie made for the door, but Maggie snagged her by the arm. “Not that way,” she whispered. “I can hear her mom waking up.”

They slipped from the window, first Debbie, and then Maggie, pushing it down into place behind them, but not locking it. Clear of the house and down the hill, across the street from the yard, and well on their way to the forest, Debbie realized the unlocked window might be a sign someone had been there if Grace’s mom had catalogued the state of the room the way Debbie had, and she couldn’t think of a reason why she wouldn’t have.

“We didn’t lock the window,” Debbie said. “I’ll have to come back tomorrow night and fix it.”

“No! You’re not coming back here ever again,” Maggie snapped. “I’ll fix the window, but it’s clearly too dangerous for you.”

“What? Why?” Debbie argued.

“Her father is a man, a man with a gun and a temper,” Maggie said, roughly shoving Debbie in the direction of the forest. “He’s dangerous, like all men. If he caught you, he’d kill you or worse.”

Debbie didn’t need to know what the ‘or worse’ was in Maggie’s mind. She could feel the deep seated hatred and fear in her and knew its source even if Maggie never said. Again, Maggie had saved her, and Debbie felt duty bound to be grateful, at the very least grateful enough to listen when Maggie said there was danger.

She didn’t return to the room. She still came up to the edge of the yard to stare longingly at the darkened window of Grace’s bedroom, but always from a safe distance and never for very long.

5.

The waning days of winter brought a strange warmth to Maggie. She and Debbie began actually walking through the woods together, seldom talking much, but spending more time around one another than normal. Debbie couldn’t say for sure if she was attracted to Maggie. They were together in the sense that they were the same in what they were and were similarly alone. From what little Debbie did know about Maggie broke her heart—she’d lived a tragic, tortured, lonely existence and Debbie wished there was something kind she could do.

On the nights Maggie didn’t want to walk with Debbie, the nights Maggie wanted to go into town, which Debbie was strictly forbidden from doing anymore, Debbie walked through the woods alone, accompanied by the orphan spirits who kept their distance, but she hoped this was more out of respect for her comfort than fear of what she was.

The orphans whispered secrets to her if she knelt by a tree and beckoned them close enough to be heard. They knew things, things she hadn’t been told, and they were willing to tell her secrets if she asked. Most of what they told her made no sense, and Debbie guessed it was information so old that even Maggie wouldn’t know what they were talking about. The hunters and woodsmen must travel in pairs, they told her. The Hessian’s corn will rot if you steal it, one orphan said. The creek can drown of its own accord. And so on. One secret, and one that was told to her more than once, meant something and never failed to make Debbie shiver: the other eats the hearts of the men she kills. Debbie didn’t need to ask who the other was that they were referring to.

6.

On a rare night, with Maggie and the orphans conspicuously absent, Debbie strolled along the dwindling creek, still frozen in patches, to see what the orphans might have meant about the water drowning of its own accord. She could sense old bones beneath the creek bed, down among the blackened rocks that the occasional flooding brought down from the mountains. The creek contained long lost bodies of children and adults, of that Debbie was certain in feeling the lingering spirits that could never escape the water, but she imagined this was probably true of most bodies of water that people lived around for any serious amount of time. She couldn’t puzzle together why the orphans thought the creek was a malicious entity in the forest.

She heard scuffling feet in the snow on the opposite side of the river. She ducked in behind an elm trunk to hide. A brief glance out from around the frosted bark found a young man, a boy really, sitting on a felled log on the opposite bank, working a rope in his hands.

Debbie could imagine the boy was freezing in his thin farm clothes. More than that, she worried what Maggie would do to him if she found him in her forest. The orphans’ secret echoed in her mind. Debbie did know what Maggie would do, what she had done in the past to men in the woods, and in that moment Debbie resolved to rob Maggie of as many victims as she could. She wasn’t sure how yet, but she needed to get the boy out of the forest.

She crept closer, slipping down the creek bank, stepping carefully along the rocks and ice patches to cross as not to be heard. The boy was busy in his task though, and Debbie was able to sneak up almost close enough to touch him. He’d finished his work on the rope, finally holding it up in front of him for inspection. Debbie’s heart leapt into her throat when she realized he’d been tying a noose into the old tattered length of homespun rope.

“Don’t!” Debbie shouted, bursting from her hiding place as the boy was setting to hang the rope from a low branch.

She expected to frighten the boy out of his course, maybe to startle him away from the rope long enough for her to tear it down, but the boy didn’t seem to be taken by surprise at all. He whirled around with angry, dead eyes, and roared an inhuman shriek at her.

“You’re a monster!” he bellowed in a hollow, angry voice far too deep for his frail frame. “The devil is in your heart and you shall burn!”

Debbie took a step back, unsure of what the boy meant or what he really was. Rather than press his advantage and come after her, the boy turned and fled into the woods, sobbing and mumbling about betrayal, about his love being treated as a shabby thing. Debbie found her courage and chased him, still with the intent of saving whatever he was from harming himself. She could barely make out his figure darting amongst the trees, wiping tears from his eyes with his sleeves, and yet still she couldn’t gain any ground. In an open expanse of the forest, where the trees thinned over flat ground, she lost him entirely.

Debbie turned slowly in a circle to search the area for him, but he was gone, vanished without a trace. She could feel Maggie coming closer though, and so Debbie knelt in the snow, feeling worn out emotionally and physically by the chase. Maggie came upon her in the vulnerable state and gently rested her hand on Debbie’s quaking shoulder—it was one of the few tender gestures that had ever passed between them.

“Not all spirits in this forest are as harmless as the orphans,” Maggie said, “but don’t be afraid of him. He knows what you are and knows he can’t hurt you.”

“Who is he?” Debbie asked.

“A troubled boy. Nothing more.”

Maggie was being kind for the moment and their relationship had grown into something warmer over the past few weeks. Debbie had a thousand questions stirring within her, but she knew her questions only made Maggie angry. Her vague, evasive answers would have to do if peace was to be maintained.

“Can you stay with me tonight?” Debbie asked. “Walk with me some?”

Maggie smiled down to her, helped her to her feet, and nodded her agreement. They walked along the creek bed in silence the rest of the night, returning to the stone cabin before morning to crawl into the cellar crypt together, to sleep mere inches apart.

Part 4: Repentance and Revenge of the Father

Spring 1956 – Henry

1.

Henry Corker stood in his backyard in the earliest days of spring, flask in hand, staring at the slowly crumbling remains of a dog house. The croakuses were pushing through the still frosted earth all around him as the back lawn threatened to turn to mud at the tree line. He lifted the metal flask to his mouth and let the rye whiskey inside burn its way down his already raw throat. He missed his son, he missed his daughter, and he even missed the old Border Collie. It was Warren’s dog, and had made it to a ripe old age of twelve before finally needing to be put down to save on suffering. Henry normally would have shot the dog himself to spare his son the pain of it, but even he couldn’t bring himself to put a gun to that old dog. They’d taken it into town to the vet who did the same job with drugs while Warren and Henry held the old black and white collie, listening to its strong heart slow and finally stop. That was all four years and a little more ago.

Warren had signed up for another hitch in the army, which put a stop to any talk of him coming back to New England to take a position at one of his father’s businesses before talk could even start. Henry and Warren, despite sharing so many similarities, didn’t understand one another. Henry and Grace, despite having nearly the same personality, hadn’t understood one another. Henry and that old dog, whose name he couldn’t remember, had understood each other. Henry knelt before the doghouse and traced his hand over the name plate above the door. The paint was all peeled from the wood, leaving no sign of the name it formerly held.

He’d gone on through winter believing, like everyone believed, that Grace was a runaway. They’d held out hope she would show up in New Haven at her aunt’s at some point after disappearing, but as January and February passed without word, Henry and his wife had come to terms with the reality that their daughter wasn’t likely to turn up. He’d even started to get used to the idea that she was probably off on her own somewhere, making her own way, strong-willed and hot-headed as ever. Then they found her knife, tracing it back to him by the initials he’d carved into the handle. The sheriff’s son had found it during an early spring thaw. That afternoon the sheriff was on Henry’s doorstep with the bloody knife Henry had given his daughter. The theory changed quickly—Grace was likely another victim of the same drifter who had taken the Poole girl.

Henry knew better. He’d been awake every night after the night his daughter had said she saw an intruder outside her window. He couldn’t help it. After his wife fell into a deep slumber, obvious by her rhythmic breathing, he slipped from bed as quiet as a ghost to stalk the darkened house, looking out the windows in hopes of catching the culprit. He’d seen her in his front yard when he was looking out through the living room window; she’d been looking up at Grace’s window. Something set her off and she screamed in a way that he swore put a fresh shock of white through his already fading black hair. He strove to convince himself it was a matter of sleep deprivation and paranoia playing tricks on him, but when the knife turned up bloody, the house of cards that was reasonable explanation came tumbling down. His daughter was dead and that creature who had screamed on his front yard had killed her—of that he had no doubt.

More than anything possible in that world, he wanted to kill that creature and burn its worthless body on a pile of garbage. If he’d had the faintest clue where to start to hunt the thing, he would already be armed and on its trail. Having grown up in the Maine wilderness, he was an accomplished hunter having killed close to a hundred deer in his life, two black bears, a handful of wild cats, and more than a few Germans and Italians during the war—killing wasn’t going to be a problem if he could find the blasted thing. It may look like a girl, but he knew it wasn’t and wouldn’t let that be an obstacle to laying his hands on its throat.

He slipped the flask back into his pocket, turned on his heels, and walked up toward the house. He would dig out his guns, clean them, and prepare for the work he desperately hoped would be shortly at hand.

2.

Henry slipped from the bed after eleven when his wife had fallen into a deep sleep. He crept into Grace’s old room, which had existed in the same state of partial packing since her disappearance. He retrieved the pump action shotgun loaded with heavy goose shot from the closet he’d hidden it in, pulled the chair from beside her vanity to the window, and sat at the sill, gun across his lap, eyes on the place in the yard he and Grace had both seen the creature.

For a week, he waited until the small hours of the night. As with all the nights before, sleep began to overtake him despite mustering his will again and again to pry his eyes open. On what he suspected would be his last rally for that night, he was shot through with adrenaline at finally seeing someone indeed approaching his yard. A girl, dressed in a mishmash of men and women’s clothing was approaching from the field across the way. He slipped from the chair, creeping through the house as silently as a forest stalker, out the backdoor and around the outside of his hilly property. He’d left his Cadillac parked near the fence, outside the garage, for an exact purpose and made good use of it, taking cover behind the long, finned rear end, which brought him within striking distance of the girl standing in his yard. He waited, watching her bare feet as the only part of her he could see from his concealed position. Finally, after what felt like close to a half hour, the girl walked away from the house, passing briefly by his hiding place.

Henry slipped from behind his car, wracked the pump on his shotgun, and brought the barrel to bear on the back of the girl’s head. “Turn around, slow,” Henry growled. He wanted to see her face, to know for certain it was her, and so she would have to look into his eyes before he ended her.

The girl turned slowly as instructed, hands held up at her sides. Henry’s jaw dropped as though slung with lead weights. It wasn’t the creature; it was his daughter’s friend, Debbie Poole.

3.

He hadn’t managed to get much from Debbie. She was delirious and distraught all on her own and shoving a shotgun in her face hadn’t done her emotional state any good. He was left with three very important pieces of information before she begged him to let her go: she didn’t know where Grace was, Pastor Gunderson was more culpable than he let on, and Maggie made use of deer trails near the highway to lure her prey. Henry had let her go, unsure of how she’d survived or what she was planning on doing next, but he couldn’t find the will to make himself care. He had enough information to launch a proper hunt and a name for his daughter’s murderer—Maggie.

Debbie, before she left, asked him one favor in return for all the information she’d given him. He agreed with a slight nod of his head. “Tell Grace I still want to go to New Haven with her,” Debbie asked of him. She was so fragile, so on the edge of hysterics already, he had agreed, which seemed to give her some small degree of comfort.

He returned to bed, but not easily to sleep. When the rush left him, he felt guilty about letting Debbie wander back into the woods alone. He didn’t care for the Pooles, but they were as deserving as anyone of knowing what became of their daughter. He resolved himself to find Debbie again once his own daughter’s soul had been laid to rest; he would return her to her parents and hope that might bring them all a little peace as well. As far as the town was concerned, Grace had always had to play second fiddle to Debbie, and Henry was about done with that nonsense—he would put her first even if that meant Debbie’s reunion with her parents would have to wait a few more days. It had already waited several months anyway.

Debbie’s comment about Pastor Gunderson rang in Henry’s head as he struggled to find sleep: “He nailed me into my room so he could send me to Waterbury and he told lies about your daughter when I disappeared.” If Henry lived a thousand years, he would never forget the way she looked when she said those words.

4.

Henry skipped work the following day, something he’d never done in his entire life. Having lived through the Great Depression, he viewed work as a scare commodity to be treasured and couldn’t imagine a reason beyond the one he had in that moment to pass up the chance to go to a job. He dressed in a suit all the same, ate breakfast as if to prepare for a normal day, made a show of reading the paper although his eyes passed meaninglessly over the words, and left at the appropriate time, but didn’t drive to the office. Instead, he turned early at the center of town and pulled up to the church.

Pastor Gunderson was in his office, reading over some letters of some kind when Henry walked in. He stood, put on his best, if transparently false, smile, and shook Henry’s hand. Henry sat across from him in the tiny room without a desk. Henry didn’t care for the layout or the audacity the pastor showed in calling the room an office—it wasn’t an office if it didn’t have a desk to work on.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Corker?” Pastor Gunderson asked.

“I’ve got something you need to see,” Henry said.

“Could you be more specific?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. Come by my house after sunset and be ready for a wait.” Henry stood, hat in hand, but didn’t move for the door while he waited for Pastor Gunderson’s response. Gunderson was taller than him when standing, but not nearly as substantial as a man and they both knew it.

“I don’t see how that would be…”

Henry reached into his jacket pocket, removing a handful of nails. He slapped them down on the little end table next to Pastor Gunderson’s chair. When he pulled away his hand, he could see he fully had the pastor’s attention. They were nails from his own workshop, but there wasn’t any reason Gunderson needed to know that.

“Nailing a girl into her room so she can’t escape,” Henry said. “Do you feel like having that conversation here or tonight, at my house, away from prying ears?”

“Tonight will be fine,” Pastor Gunderson murmured under his breath, never tearing his eyes away from the nails.

Henry slipped his hat on and gave Gunderson a stern nod. “Keep the nails, Gunderson,” he said. “I think you need them more than me.”

5.

That evening, Gunderson stopped by, ate dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Corker, although he looked about on the edge of crawling out of his skin with discomfort the entire evening. Mrs. Corker was thrilled at having the company and even happier to see that Mr. Corker was the one to invite the pastor. Henry ate in silence, letting his wife and Pastor Gunderson talk as they felt necessary. When the meal was over, and the dishes washed, Henry asked his wife to give them their privacy to discuss a few things. She reluctantly complied, bidding them both a good evening before heading up to bed.

Henry and Pastor Gunderson sat in the living room for several hours smoking cigars, and doing very little talking. The ticking of the clock on the mantle and the occasional rustling of Pastor Gunderson’s uncomfortable fidgeting offered the only sound in the room for several hours. Pastor Gunderson seemed to be on the verge of saying something when Henry finally stood from his chair and directed them both to the front window.

“Who you’re meant to see should be here soon,” Henry said.

Pastor Gunderson watched the darkened lawn, clearly becoming more agitated by the moment. Henry stood in silence beside him, smoking his cigar in slow, deliberate motions, eyes never leaving the spot at the edge of his property. Finally, the ghostly white figure of a girl arrived, and Henry could feel the tangible shift in Gunderson’s posture and breathing.

“Who is that?” Pastor Gunderson asked.

“I think you know,” Henry replied. “She’s been coming by nearly every night now for awhile now, wondering after my daughter.” Henry set aside the last stub of his cigar on the ashtray left on the windowsill for just such an occasion. “She thinks my daughter ran off to New Haven without her. I can’t bring myself to tell her Grace is dead.”

“How is this…?”

“Don’t talk, Gunderson,” Henry cut him off. “This is your chance to do some listening and in a little while, I’ll give you a chance to take some action.” Henry guided Pastor Gunderson away from the window, back to their original positions of sitting in the dark on opposite sides of the living room. “My daughter is dead—I know it, and so do you. She died because you didn’t believe her and I didn’t do enough to protect her. The Poole girl outside isn’t dead, although this whole town stumbled ass-backward into believing she was because it served your purposes for everyone to think so, and don’t think I don’t know where those placating stories came from. You lied about her, lied about my daughter, and did it all in the name of covering your own zealotry.” Henry gave the comment a moment to sink in and to let the rage rising within him subside a little before continuing. He hated Gunderson with a growing fire, but he also needed him for what was to come. “There’s something in the woods feeding on our town and the thing out there isn’t human. It’s been allowed to thrive on our disbelief and the failure of this town’s men to act. You and me, we’re putting a stop to it.”

“Say I do believe you,” Gunderson said, “why would I help you in this mad witch hunt?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll give the people of Vigil’s Rest a new witch to hunt,” Henry growled. “How do you think it’ll look for you if I bring Debbie Poole home to her parents with a very different story to tell about the night she disappeared? Hell, her very existence contradicts everything you’ve been telling people for months.”

“And if I do help?”

“I’ll give you a two day head start to clear out before I bring the Poole girl back to her parents,” Henry said. “Don’t think of it in those terms though. You dug your own grave long ago. I’m offering you a chance to be a soldier of heaven in fighting something truly evil; I’m offering you a chance to be the shepherd of this town and protect the flock you’ve let wolves feed upon.”

Finally, Gunderson agreed with little more than a nod of his head. They parted company with a firm handshake and a promise to resume their planning later in the week. Henry held him in the house until Debbie was gone before walking him to his car.

Henry watched the pastor pull away and kept watching the woods long after Gunderson was gone. The pastor hadn’t asked him how he knew any of what he knew—the galvanizing words had sufficed. He slipped an envelope from his pocket and weighted it down on the top of a fencepost with a large enough rock from the garden. Within the envelope was a handful of nails and a newspaper clipping about Pastor Gunderson presiding over Deborah Poole’s funeral. He went back inside to head to bed, confident the envelope would be gone before morning.

6.

The following evening, Henry dressed for the hunt, kissed his wife, packed his guns in his Cadillac, and drove into town. The envelope had indeed been taken before morning, leaving Henry with two distinct advantages: Pastor Gunderson had no idea he was coming and the thing in the woods now had an appropriate target for its rage.

Henry pulled up outside of Pastor Gunderson’s house to find exactly what he’d expected—the pastor was in the middle of packing for a hasty move, which Henry wasn’t supposed to see. He strolled up to the front door and walked right in, scaring Gunderson’s skeleton nearly out of his mouth. The pastor stood in the middle of his mostly boxed little living room, looking as though he’d been caught red handed by Jesus himself.

“The two day head start wouldn’t have been enough to…” Gunderson began.

“Never mind that,” Henry cut him off. “Get your boots and your gun. We’ve got business in the woods.”

Gunderson did as he was told, dressing as though they were going deer hunting and arming himself with an old, bolt action Springfield rifle. They drove in silence toward the deer trail Debbie had mentioned. Henry clicked off the headlights and drove in the dark the last bit, killing the engine to let his massive car haul itself down the final hill in almost complete silence. He pulled off to the side of the road, allowing the lumbering Cadillac roll to a stop on its own. They waited, watching the deer trail, for an hour before a ghostly figure emerged from the woods.

“Who is that?” Gunderson asked, squinting through the darkness to better see the blond, willowy woman in tattered rags.

“Go see for yourself,” Henry replied.

Gunderson slipped from the car, taking his hunting rifle with him. Henry watched through the windshield as the pastor crept up toward the old barbwire fence, trying to get a closer look without being seen. Henry’s hand instinctively came to the Colt .45 in the breast pocket of his hunting jacket. He patted the reassuring weight and withdrew his hand. The pastor needed to see for himself.

Pastor Gunderson stepped carefully through the barbwire fence into the muddy field, stalking closer and closer to the woman who was walking perpendicular to him, but not yet aware he was there. Henry took this cue to quietly exit the vehicle, using the front of the Cadillac as cover. The night was so silent, only an occasional breeze rustling the trees at a distance to break the stillness. Henry thought the zipper of his hunting jacket surely must have echoed for miles as he slowly pulled it down to get at the loaded pistol inside his coat. A quick glance around the front fender of the Cadillac confirmed that Gunderson was making good time across the field.

Henry departed his cover and followed low along the fence line. Combat had tempered his nerves through the war, but the decade since had softened his resolve. The surge of excited fear hit his hands with a bit of a shake, but never broke the will required to continue forward. Gunderson would call out, that was his way, and the creature, which should be afraid of an armed man in the night, would instead attack, and this would be Henry’s chance.

Gunderson came close enough to get a good enough look at the girl and came to a stop. He called out to her, the way Henry had hoped, and limbered his gun at his side to make it seem less threatening.

“Excuse me, miss, are you okay?” Gunderson shouted as follow up when the creature didn’t immediately respond to his first hail.

Henry began to wonder if he’d misjudged the whole thing. He crept farther up to get a better look at the girl to make sure it was the same one. Barely concealed by the long grass along the fence, he dared go no closer. Even at the fairly lengthy distance and when viewed through the gloom of night, Henry was certain it was the same creature that had stood on his lawn the week before his daughter disappeared.

“Don’t be afraid,” Gunderson said. “I’m a pastor, Pastor Gunderson, and I’m only trying to help.”

This simple reassurance set the creature off. It snapped its head around, finally acknowledging Gunderson’s existence with a withering glare. The narrowed eyes spread until the girl’s entire face had transformed into something else entirely, something inhuman. Gunderson panicked at this, seemingly caught between fleeing and fighting. He pulled his rifle up, fumbled with the bolt to chamber a cartridge, and nearly dropped the whole mess into the mud in the process. The girl started across the field toward him, taking its time, growing more monstrous with every step it took. Still, Henry waited, wanted to be sure in his shots as the Navy .45s threw heavy slugs, but did so inaccurately beyond a short range. More so, he wanted Gunderson to be sure in what he saw. He needed the pastor to believe this monster was every bit as real as the god he prayed to even if it was the thought he departed this world with.

In a surprising bit of steely nerves that Henry hadn’t thought the pastor capable, he managed to get his rifle set to fire, shouldered the weapon, and tore off a remarkably well placed shot at the creature when it was a meager twenty feet away. The massive .30 caliber bullet struck home on the creature’s left shoulder, spinning her off balance in her methodical charge.

Henry, not expecting the pastor to do quite so well in his own defense, jumped from his hiding spot too soon, missing his chance as the creature sprinted back toward the woods, holding its wounded limb.

“Back to the car, Gunderson!” Henry shouted, making his own run back to the vehicle.

His heart pounded, his boots crunched along the dirt road, and a rage built in him as they neared his car. This was what he remembered most from the war, the fear bringing about a murderous rage when the tide began to turn. He’d used it to fuel a devastating blood lust in pressing the advantage when the enemy showed its back. They jumped into the car, with Gunderson a scant step behind Henry. The Cadillac’s giant engine jumped to life, he hit the headlights, and tore down the access road into the field, quickly catching up to the wounded creature. He stomped the gas when the heavy Fleetwood was lined up on his target, spraying mud and sod out the back wheels. The car leapt to, closing the gap in an instant. The front of the car barreled over the creature illuminated starkly in the blinding headlights for only a second before they heard her rattling along beneath the floorboards.

Henry stomped the brake and spun the wheel. The massive car pirouetted through the open field like a possessed metal bull. The exhaust smoke and mud thrown in the air by the charge and sudden change of direction left them blind for a moment. The creature came flying out of the hazy blue exhaust, hell bent on passing the vehicle back toward the woods on the driver’s side. There wasn’t time enough to get the front of the car going on an intercept course. Henry turned into the charge as best he could, waited for his moment, and then sprung the driver’s side door open to impact the creature as it came along side, flashing wicked fangs and dead, black eyes in the headlights of the car. The door hit home with a hollow, metallic thud, and the creature stumbled out into the field.

Henry slammed on the brakes again and jumped out of the car when it slid to a stop. He got his pistol out and brought it to bear with a quaking hand. The headlights of the car only illuminated the back half of the creature with how she’d fallen and how he’d slid to a stop. He wanted to taste her demise, to make sure she knew who he was and why he was there. He’d never had that chance in the war, it was always at a distance with explosives and steel, but now he had an enemy no less evil than the Nazis under his metaphorical knife, and by god he would savor it.

The creature he’d thought beaten and broken sprung to life at the last second, hurling herself out of the halo of light created by the headlights. He chased the fleeting black form, cursing his aging eyes from not adjusting fast enough to the darkness for a clean shot. He fired nevertheless. The Navy Colt jumped in his hand, snapping with the familiar sound of a .45 automatic, raining brass casings in his wake as he gave chase toward the woods. He stopped short of the tree line, convinced he hadn’t hit with a single shot.

Pastor Gunderson came rushing to his side. The good pastor had retrieved Henry’s own hunting rifle from the backseat of the Cadillac and now held it out to him.

“I may have doubted before, but God has made me see the truth of this evil,” Pastor Gunderson said. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe your daughter and I’m sorry I doubted you. That thing isn’t human and needs to be destroyed.”

Henry took the gun, trying to fight down the rage that had a firm hold over him. The plan could still work. The creature could still die by his hand. “There’s a clearing down around an old cow pond not far from here,” Henry said. “If you can lure the creature there, I can get a clean shot off from the bluff.”

Pastor Gunderson, now an ardent, if unwitting, agent of his own demise, nodded his agreement and followed Henry into the darkened woods.

7.

Both practiced hunters, armed with flashlights and rifles, the duo easily tracked the wounded creature through the forest. Luring became less possible, making shepherding their primary function. The creature was slowed and wounded, stumbling through the underbrush, leaving a trail of blood and broken branches as it fled. Gunderson and Henry split up at the base of the bluff with the pastor ushering the creature ever forward toward the cow pond and clearing while Henry scaled the soft, damp earth of the bluff.

Henry was breathing heavy and sweating profusely when he finally pulled himself up atop the shallow rise. The muck and mud of the forest had made the entire climb an ordeal, but the vantage point was well worth the strain. He found a fallen tree at the leading edge of the bluff’s decline and lay out behind it, steadying his rifle across the decaying tree’s bark.

He looked down through the scope at the forest floor below, easily picking out the white rags of the creature flashing between the incomplete spring canopy of leaves. She was looking behind her, concerned with Gunderson’s pursuit. He couldn’t spot the pastor yet, but he could tell from the creature’s change in focus that Gunderson must be swinging wide to drive her back toward the bluff and the cow pond clearing. Henry took as many deep, calming breaths as he could to steady his nerve and take the shake out of his hands. It wasn’t such a long distance to create a difficult shot, but he wanted to make the hit a good one when the opportunity presented itself. If he hit her head with the 30-06, as he intended to, the shell would likely sheer off the entire back of her head on the way through.

The creature was close to the clearing. The moon broke free of the patchwork cloud cover at the exact right moment, bathing the entire clearing in a pale white glow. For a second, a brief, triumphant moment, the creature’s gaunt face was beneath his crosshairs. In the second after, before his trigger finger could even caress the trigger, the gun was knocked from his hands and he was thrown back into the soft leaf litter of the forest floor.

The surprise attack may have disarmed him, but hadn’t robbed him of his senses. He scrambled back to his feet, yanking his pistol from the front of his jacket to fell his would be attacker. The beam of his flashlight, trained in unison with the muzzle of his pistol, scanned across the woods back to where he’d made his sniper’s nest until he spotted his assailant.

Little Debbie Poole, frightened and dirty, stood barefoot and trembling at the edge of the bluff. Henry relaxed a moment, but didn’t lower the flashlight or gun from their aim on her chest.

“You can’t kill her,” Debbie said. “Please, Mr. Corker, I need her to survive.”

“She’s a monster,” Henry objected.

“I know, but she’s all I’ve got!”

“I can take you back to your parents…”

“I would die before going back.”

Henry knew it was true. He hadn’t when she’d first told him about the nails and the impending commitment to a mental hospital, but he’d known it all to be absolutely true when he’d seen Gunderson’s reaction to the nails. Delivering her back to her parents would be a fate worse than death, and he couldn’t do it against her will even if it meant clearing his daughter’s name.

He lowered the gun, but not the flashlight. He’d been so certain, so damn certain the whole evening and now he was faltering because he knew how much his Gracie had cared for her friend, and somehow, somewhere he hoped she saw him showing Debbie a bit of kindness in hearing her out.

“Just leave,” Debbie said. “Go home, forget all about her, and forget about me.”

“That thing is a killer,” Henry protested, stopping himself short of saying who she had killed to warrant such vengeance. He’d convinced himself with only the tiniest trappings of proof, but he didn’t know, not really, and if he was wrong, it would mean wronging Debbie Poole all over again.

“She saved me from being raped,” Debbie said. “Once when the drifter attacked me and again when Phil tried. I’m only alive now because she saved me.”

There wasn’t any reason to think she was lying, not when so much of what she’d just said matched the things Grace had told him that horrible summer. As with most things, it was all a lot easier to remain determined when he kept his head down and ignored everything but his goal. He suddenly felt very old and very tired.

“What about Gunderson?” he asked as the final gasp of his dying desire for vengeance.

“You were willing to sacrifice him for your revenge,” Debbie said. “Don’t the same reasons apply for mine?”

Many of them did, and Henry had to admit it. Gunderson had a lot to answer for and not just when it came to Grace Corker or Deborah Poole. If the woods didn’t claim the children of Vigil’s Rest, Pastor Gunderson might take them when they’d grown to teenagers. If Henry hadn’t been so hardheaded and thought so little of the pastor, who knows what Gunderson might have convinced them of when it came to Grace and Warren. But Debbie didn’t know all of the reasons, and she needed to. Henry put away his pistol and retrieved the knife he’d given to Grace, the blade still stained with blood. He held it out and waited for her to take it. She reluctantly took a few steps toward him, remaining as far away as she could, and accepted the offered item.

“What is it?”

“I gave Grace that knife to defend herself after we all thought you were killed by a drifter,” Henry explained. “She never went to New Haven. The night before she was supposed to leave, she wasn’t there when I went to pick her up from work.” Henry walked past the stunned Debbie and collected his rifle. He wanted to look through the scope to know what was happening in the clearing, but he resisted the urge, turning his back on the edge of the bluff without so much as a glance down the hill. “When they found the knife in the spring thaw, there was blood on the blade. I’ll leave it to you to decide how it got there.”

Henry couldn’t say for certain what the nature of the relationship between Debbie and his daughter had been, and he really didn’t care anymore. Revenge wasn’t going to bring back Grace and the more he learned of the situation the less he wanted to have to do with the whole thing. Grace’s revenge, if there was to be any, could be Debbie’s decision.

“For what it’s worth, my daughter sure thought you were something special,” Henry said as he walked past Debbie, back down the bluff the same way he’d come.

8.

Debbie rolled the knife over in her hands again and again. The blood on the blade, dried and degraded as it was, smelled familiar and she knew precisely why since the entire forest was alive with the scent of Maggie’s blood that night.

Debbie could hear Pastor Gunderson’s final moments in the clearing below. Maggie had rallied with the time purchased during her escape and without Henry’s possible killing blow, the good pastor who had once threatened Debbie with eternal damnation and electroshock therapy was left to fight the witch of Vigil’s Wood alone in the dark.

Feeding upon Pastor Gunderson and recuperating from her injuries would take Maggie most of the rest of the night. Debbie fled the scene, knife in hand; she had to see something, had to know something before she spoke to Maggie again. Debbie raced through the woods, ignoring the curious eyes of the darkened, ghostly silhouettes throughout the forest that represented the lingering spirits of the dead. She suspected they could see her intentions as though she wore them like a cloak of the brightest red. They loved her, believed she would save them, she could feel their trust in her, but she didn’t know how to save them, how to free them from what held them in the shadows of the haunted woods. Sometimes she wondered if they were real or just a deepening of her own madness that she suspected was increasingly matching Maggie’s.

The bone field, the clearing where Debbie had died, where Maggie eventually brought most of her kills, was somewhere Debbie avoided as cursed and holy at once. She hadn’t set foot in it since the night Maggie had saved her from Phil. But she entered it now with a vague goal in mind.

Debbie searched the ground, the grisly totems, the human bones gnawed clean by scavengers both natural and otherworldly. She didn’t know what there would be to find until she saw the tilted straw doll, impaled upon several sharpened sticks. Around its neck, glinting in a lone shaft of moonlight, was a familiar locket. Debbie raced across the clearing, stumbling to a stop on her hands and knees before the straw doll. She tore the totem from the ground and pulled the locket free of the doll, destroying the hastily made toy in the process. She opened the locket to find the familiar picture of herself with a corresponding picture of Grace on the other side.

Debbie clutched the locket to her chest and cried. She hated Maggie with an intense purity unlike anything she’d ever felt in her life. She couldn’t kill Maggie, not yet, she didn’t know if she could kill anyone, but she thought the willpower might come to her one day and wanted to remember that moment if the time ever came.

Debbie returned to their shared home, the stone cabin built in a time before the modern world could even be seen on the horizon. The orphans and spirits followed her, closer than they’d ever dared come before. They surrounded her like her own children, seeking her approval yet striving to protect her. She waited in the midst of the shadowy spirits, locket in hand, blocking the doorway of the cabin she’d shared with Maggie for months.

The choice would be Maggie’s to tell the truth or be banished. Debbie didn’t have to wait as long as she thought before Maggie emerged from the woods, still limping and ragged, but far more whole than she’d been when she first fled past Debbie after being hit by the car.

“Debbie?” Maggie asked, her voice small and hurt.

“Did you kill Grace?” Debbie asked.

“I told you,” Maggie said, “a girl like that…”

“I know what you told me, but…you killed Grace.” Debbie pulled the locket from behind her back and held it out for the gathered spirits and Maggie to see, letting it shimmer in the fading light of the moon like a dying candle. “You took her from me and lied to me when she was gone.” A crawling realization came over Debbie—Maggie was a liar. She couldn’t even imagine how many times Maggie must have lied to her over the years. She mixed truth and lies so liberally, probably believing them both equally herself, until Debbie couldn’t be certain of anything Maggie had told her.

“We’re not safe in that world!” Maggie shrieked. “You don’t understand what they would have done to you if you’d gone with her. Ruin, she would have brought ruin on you both. Men, wicked, hurtful men with their pawing hands and filthy minds destroy beautiful women like you, like us, and the loves we share with each other. They’ll do it just to prove their strength, or have you forgotten the night I saved you?”

“No,” Debbie said, “I remember Phil and what you did to him.” Debbie clutched the locket closer to her chest. “But I’m not like you. I don’t want to be like you. Please, leave me alone.”

Debbie turned her back on Maggie, turned her back on the woman that was her savior and her abuser all in one, and walked into the darkness of the stone cabin. The spirits, the orphans, the shades of those who died in the woods thickened, blocking Maggie from following. Debbie could feel them, feel their hatred and their protectiveness of her. She was of them and they would keep her safe now.

9.

Henry skipped the newspaper the following morning and every morning after. He spoke with his wife instead while they both ate. He drove past a farm on the way home from work, spotting a sign he’d ignored for weeks that advertised a littler of puppies. He drove home that day with a new Border Collie.

Pastor Gunderson’s disappearance was unremarkable news. His home was found in a state of partial packing and all the murmurs of his possible involvement in the commitment to an insane asylum of many local teenagers began to grow louder. Fled in disgrace was the final word on what became of the pastor, and while Henry didn’t much care for speaking ill of the dead, he thought it was about as fitting of an epitaph as the man deserved.

Debbie’s words haunted him though. She chose the monster over her own parents, over the town that had turns its back on her. She would have gladly taken death over Vigil’s Rest. Adding to this the shabby treatment his own daughter had received at the hands of the townspeople, Henry couldn’t reconcile staying.

He sold his property to the dairy company he was a partial owner in. Construction on a new state of the art pasteurization and bottling plant would begin that summer in the place of his former home. Standing in the late spring sun beside his Cadillac that still bore the scars of his failed battle against the witch of Vigil’s Wood, Henry was glad for the new direction of his life. His son was giving them their first grandchild, a daughter he’d promised to name Grace.

Henry pulled out of his old driveway, leading out the moving truck, heading down to Rhode Island to be closer to his son and granddaughter.

Part 5: Angel of Solemnity

Autumn 1982 – Daphne

1.

Daphne loved history and stories, but not in the same way her older sister did. While Ruth liked the facts of the past, Daphne much preferred the fantasies. Her favorites were the ghost stories and local legends about Vigil’s Woods. Someday, she thought she might write some of her own.

Their parents’ divorce placed them firmly between two coldly warring factions within the town. Her father was something of a local hero, having played on the high school basketball team that had won the state championship while her mother was a well-respected local business woman who ran a successful real estate agency. Both parents still had family in the area and both families politely blamed the other for the dissolution of such an obviously important marriage in Vigil’s Rest. While Ruth was the type to side firmly with her mother, agreeing fully that their father was a dimming star who had peaked too soon and now faded into unimportance begrudgingly, Daphne loved her irresponsible father for his imperfections. She saw in him something of a romantically tragic figure destined for something bigger, but with the door for greatness long since closed, never to be opened again.

Daphne waited on the curb outside her house in the predawn hours of the morning. Her father would be by to take her fishing and camping before six. They had to leave so early so they could sneak up on the fish—even Daphne knew that. She waited and waited until the sky pinked with the dawn, and waited on even after the sun was fully up and the sky had turned a pale blue. She knew her mother was checking the window from time to time behind her, but Daphne never turned around to see. It was how her mother coped with her own loss: making it all about how badly and how often he disappointed his daughters. At least, that’s what Daphne suspected.

Finally, her father’s beat up old gray Chevy pickup pulled around the corner and up to the curb. Her father opened the passenger door with a metallic creak and Daphne hopped into the cigarette tainted interior.

2.

They drove along through Vigil’s Rest with her father smoking Winston 100s from a soft pack and asking Daphne questions about school. She answered as animatedly as she could, hoping to catch her father’s flagging attention, but he always seemed more interested in fiddling with the radio or lighting another cigarette than he did in her answers.

They turned south to drive through the rolling hills and farmland leading into Vigil’s Woods. The morning sun began beating down on the interior of the truck. Daphne, having awoken several hours too early after a night in which she was too excited to sleep much, began dozing off in the warmth of the morning sun shining through the cracked windshield. Her father clamped his cigarette between his lips, steered with one hand, and tickled her with the other to wake her up whenever she dozed off. She looked to him expectantly each time he interrupted her dozing, but he never had anything he wanted to say. When the truck began bouncing along rutted dirt roads off the main highway and the autumn trees obscured the sun with leaves just beginning to turn shades of gold and orange, Daphne abandoned any further plans of sleep.

Her father’s fishing spot was secreted away and required specific knowledge of how to get there along with the awareness of exactly when to turn. Daphne always marveled at this since she never saw the turn off for the trail until her father was already in the process of turning off. The old truck crept along the abandoned cow trail, barely dodging between trunks of trees, leaving a trail of blue, burned oil exhaust in its wake whenever her father gunned the big V8 from to get over a newly exposed rock.

The small clearing next to Lewis Creek practically felt like a second home to the ten-year-old Daphne who had spent most summer weekends there for as many years as she could remember. September trips were rare though, and it was only because her father had found work operating a gravel loader in Massachusetts over the summer that their camping trip had been pushed to the first weekend of fall.

The creek was low, having long since spent its summer runoff in the dog days of August. Rocks that were normally well beneath the water now poked up into the middle, forcing the swift moving creek to bubble and gurgle around them. Daphne crept down to the edge, looking for a few choice rocks to hurl in, but then thought better of it knowing her father would chide her for scaring off the fish.

“Daffy, why don’t you see about finding us some bait while I unload the truck,” her father shouted from the far edge of the clearing.

Daphne gave him a non-fish-frightening thumb up and began her bug hunt. During their summer trips, grasshoppers were fat, slow, and easy to catch. By September though, apparently they were non-existent. She searched in vain for the entire time her father was erecting the tent and unpacking their gear. When he was done and her hands were empty, he produced a trowel and told her to get digging.

She followed the guidance he’d offered long ago, looking for the dead leaves and soft ground worms liked, and after another hour of the muddy work, she’d produced an old bean can’s worth of worms, wriggling in the rich, dark Vermont soil she’d poured over them to keep them alive.

Her father produced a couple of chicken salad sandwiches from a cooler and they ate in silence, sitting on their usual rocks, facing the creek. Daphne was beginning to get a bit big for her smaller sitting rock, and her knees poked up too high to use her legs effectively as a table anymore. She struggled through the sandwich, as the wax paper it was wrapped in kept sliding off her tented knees. She didn’t want to eat the sandwich anyway. She was hungry, but she knew who had really made the lunch. Her father couldn’t cook anywhere but a campfire, and even something as basic as chicken salad between two pieces of white bread was well beyond him. Nina had made the sandwiches. Nina of the blue turquoise eye shadow, big blond hair, who worked out at the weigh station, and referred to Daphne’s father as ‘her man.’ Oh how Daphne hated Nina. She wrapped up the quickly crumbling remains of the sandwich in the wax paper and set it beside her sitting rock. She would eat a fish she caught herself—she didn’t need Nina’s stupid sandwich.

“We don’t waste food,” her father grumbled.

“You don’t even like chicken salad,” Daphne argued even while she was picking up the crumbling remains of her sandwich.

“Sure I do,” her father replied, still grimacing his way through his own lunch.

She glared at her father from the safety of just outside his peripheral vision. He had dressing all through his thick red moustache and his naturally squinty eyes were even more squinted with how little he liked chicken salad with grapes, and apparently Nina used a lot of grapes. Reluctantly, Daphne choked down the last of her sandwich, crumpled the wax paper, and threw it into the woods as hard as she could.

3.

They fished in silence for most of the afternoon. Her father had offered to put the worm on her hook for her, but Daphne insisted she could do it herself. She’d tried several times, losing four worms before she successfully baited her own hook—the quick-moving creek water immediately un-baited it for her.

She became frustrated and angry about the whole thing and her father suggested she go take a walk in the woods to cool off before she scared the fish away. Daphne tromped off, not really caring anymore if they even caught fish. She wandered through the woods, up along the creek bank, until she was certain she was well out of earshot of her father. Once she was alone with the sound of the babbling creek and the wind through the leaves, she began pulling up the biggest rocks she could carry with two hands and started hurling them into the creek with great, satisfying splashes. There would be no fish and her father would have to eat Nina’s terrible chicken salad all weekend—that’d teach him.

She was about to hurl the last rock into the creek when she saw someone moving on the other side. Backlit by the fading light of late afternoon and obscured by the trunks of a few elm trees, it was difficult to tell what the boy was doing, but he was clearly about an important task having to do with a low-hanging branch. Daphne strained and squinted to get a better look at the boy. He looked to be a few years older than her, cute in a sort of country way, dressed in strange looking overalls with a mop of unkempt sandy blond hair atop his head. He was doing something with a rope. Daphne assumed making a rope swing, but he was too far from the water, hanging it too low, and the creek wouldn’t be any good to swim in at that point anyway.

“Hey,” Daphne shouted, “you’re going to kill yourself on those rocks if you try to swing into the creek.”

The boy didn’t pay her shouts any mind. He’d about finished his task of securing the rope, checking its load-bearing capacity by dangling from the end by his arms a few times. Daphne was about to open her mouth to shout again, seeing as it was clear to her that he would go bouncing off a dozen tree trunks if he tried swinging from the rope where he’d hung it. Before she could even fill her lungs enough to get off a good shout, the boy slipped the loop of the rope around his neck, and leapt off the fallen log he’d climbed atop to go swinging out into the forest. His legs jerked in strange, gut-wrenching ways as he swung between the tree trunks, hitting every one Daphne thought he would.

She screamed rather than shouted and slid down the creek bank into the water, trying desperately to wade across in time to save the boy. The scream, combined with the little girl splash into the water caught her father’s attention, and soon he was storming up the bank, crashing through the underbrush, moving with speed and purpose she didn’t know he possessed anymore. The strong, swift-moving water caught her legs before she was even a few feet from the bank, knocking her down onto the slippery rocks below the surface, and she found herself tumbling along the creek toward her shouting father. He reached in with a sure hand and scooped her out by the arm, hauling her from the frigid water to deposit her on the bank.

“Jesus Christ, Daffy, what were you doing?” her father shouted at her. His voice sounded scared and angry all at once.

“There’s a boy,” Daphne protested through chattering teeth, “he hung himself from a tree on the other side. You have to help him.”

Her father scanned the other side of the creek and shook his head. “I don’t see any boy.”

“He’s right there!” Daphne pointed to where she thought she’d seen him but the woods were empty. She scanned up and down the bank, but still didn’t see anyone. She scrambled to her feet, dried leaves clinging to her soaked clothes, and ran back up the creek bank searching for the boy. She spotted the exact fallen log he’d used to hang himself from, but there was no boy and no rope.

“There’s no boy,” her father said, chasing her down. He scooped her up and hauled her back toward the camp, clutching her desperately to his chest.

With her ear pressed against his flannel shirt, she could hear his heart pounding in his chest. She’d scared him—she felt terrible about it.

4.

They sat around the campfire after the sun had gone down. Daphne was still cold even in her dry change of clothes and with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her father had asked if she wanted to go home early, but she’d flatly refused. She was cold, but she wasn’t a quitter.

They didn’t talk about the boy in the tree. She thought her father would accuse her of telling lies, but he didn’t seem interested in the matter. They ate their second chicken salad sandwiches of the day in silence, listening to the crackling of the fire and the gurgling of the creek. The only conversation that took place after sunset was her father asking if she wanted to toast marshmallows and her replying that she didn’t feel like it.

They went to bed shortly after, curling in their sleeping bags on opposite sides of the tent. After an hour or so of silence, huddled into her sleeping bag against the chilly night, Daphne began to feel frightened again. The image of the boy hanging himself wouldn’t leave her mind. He was so businesslike about the whole thing, so determined, and then his body convulsing at the end of the rope was something she was certain she would have nightmares about the rest of her life.

She finally gave breath to her fears, “I want my mom.”

“She’s not here and it’s too late to go home now,” her father replied.

“I’m scared and I want my mom,” Daphne repeated.

“You should have realized that hours ago when I asked if you wanted to go home. Now go to sleep.”

Daphne whimpered into her sleeping bag. It was so quiet, so tranquil in the woods at night, she was certain her father heard her, but he made no move to comfort or scold her. She continued her soft crying until she finally dozed off without a peep of any kind from her father.

5.

Daphne’s sleep was remarkably dreamless. She awoke the next morning to the soothing sounds of the forest, coming to when the sun’s light began to warm the tent enough to make her sleeping bag uncomfortably warm. She crept from her bag and looked to her father. He was still asleep, turned with his back toward her, his wild red hair, which was beginning to streak with gray, was the only part of him visible outside his sleeping bag.

She wasn’t sure how to wake him. He’d always awoken her on camping trips. “Dad,” she said, with no response. She placed her hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle shake with still no response. Panic began to rise in her and she gave his shoulder a strong, two-handed shove. His body rocked in position but limply returned to the same place. She grabbed the top edge of the sleeping bag and pulled it toward her. His entire body, sleeping bag and all, made the roll, knocking her backward.

His face was slack, his eyes clenched tight, and his skin looked pallid and clammy. She touched his face. He felt cool and sweaty at once. She held her hand above his mouth and below his nose, feeling only the ragged traces of breathing. He was alive, but barely.

She remembered her mother saying her father was a diabetic and not the kind who would get sick if they missed their shots, the kind who would die if they didn’t pay attention to their condition. She’d also said he wasn’t the type to care for himself the way he ought to.

Daphne scrambled from the tent and futilely scanned the surrounding woods as though someone, anyone might materialize to help her. She retrieved water from the truck where they’d locked their perishable supplies and tried to help him drink, but he was unmovable and unresponsive to her urgings. She searched through his stuff, through her stuff, through every possible hiding place in the camping supplies for his insulin shots and testing equipment but couldn’t find it anywhere. She knew what it looked like, a little leather satchel, brown with a brass zipper. When she couldn’t find it, she searched for just the syringes and little glass bottles of medicine. Even this was nowhere to be found. After her search yielded no medicine or means of contacting help, she plopped down on her sitting rock and cried into the tops of her knees.

6.

She made two attempts to find the road that afternoon. After the second attempt barely returned her to camp, she decided becoming lost in the woods wouldn’t help her or her father. She couldn’t say if his condition was worsening as he’d seemed near death when she woke up that morning and hadn’t done anything different since. She re-started the campfire and waited as night came on. They weren’t expected back until the following evening, and she didn’t believe her mother would truly become concerned for another day after that as she remembered her father saying he might just keep her out of school on Monday to make up for lost time. That was the sort of fun, but ultimately irresponsible thing he’d do, like leaving his insulin at home.

The sun set low through the trees and with the darkness came a chilly edge to the night air. She huddled closer to the fire and deeper into the blanket she’d wrapped around her shoulders. The boy from the day before was nearly forgotten until she heard the strange, but unmistakable creaking of something heavy dangling from a rope and the strain it put on an old branch. Shivers crawled across her skin like icy bugs and she strained her hearing to make sure what she thought she heard wasn’t simply her mind playing tricks on her. The creaking and groaning of rope and tree limb continued, quickly adding to it the sounds of frantic feet kicking against bark. She stood and stared across the darkened creek toward the source of the sound, but couldn’t see anything. She bolted into the tent when she heard the splash of something heavy landing in the swift moving creek.

She grasped her father’s shoulders and shook him with all the strength she could muster. His body was rigid, cold, and completely lifeless in her hands. Frightened, mournful tears streamed down her cheeks with every futile attempt to awaken her now dead father. He’d saved her the day before but she didn’t believe she’d done nearly enough to save him. She searched through the side pockets along the inside of the tent until she found his keys. She couldn’t drive the truck, but she could lock herself inside until the morning or help arrived. She found her father’s keychain with the telltale metal Chevrolet insignia. She scrambled from the tent, losing her feet in the process, nearly stumbling into the fire as she tried to regain her balance. Hunched over her father’s sitting rock, she searched the ground around the edge of the fire for where she might have dropped the truck keys. Her gaze traveled up over the top of the dwindling fire where a new figure was standing at the edge of the creek, barely illuminated by the dying embers of her campfire. It was the boy with dead white eyes, drenched from the waist down, the hastily tied noose still around his neck.

She screamed, forgetting entirely about her search for the truck keys, and ran into the woods in whatever direction was closest. Away from the campfire, the darkness and cold of the woods encased her immediately. She could hear the boy chasing after her, making good time despite the fact that it sounded like he was dragging behind him the branch he’d tied his noose to. The darkness became all encompassing until she was stumbling blindly over uneven ground and bouncing off the trunks of trees that she couldn’t see until it was too late. She didn’t know how the dead boy was moving so quickly, but from the dwindling distance of the sound of his thrashing behind her, she could tell he wasn’t having nearly the trouble she was.

Somehow she’d circled back to the creek although she thought she’d run in the direction of the road. She heard the water an instant too late as she burst from the woods, slowed only by a low bush snagging her corduroy pants, and she was tumbling down the creek bank into the frigid, turbulent water. This time, with no father left to save her, she bounced along the rocks painfully, swept along by the frothy, cold water sputtering with growing futility to keep her head above as each snag and jolt dunked her back under. The tumultuous roiling of the river knocked all sense of direction from her until she wasn’t even sure she was swimming toward the black surface of the water rather than the black bottom each time she was sent tumbling under. On the verge of what she thought would be her last sputtering breath, she felt herself lifted from the water.

7.

Daphne relaxed in her savior’s embrace, allowing the angel to caress her hair and whisper sweet promises that she was safe, finally safe. Daphne believed every word of it. Her guardian angel was beautiful with strawberry blond hair and otherworldly blue eyes, but she also looked a little sad, and Daphne wondered why.

“My father is dead,” Daphne said, “back at the camp.”

“I’m sorry,” the angel replied.

“There was a dead boy, he hung himself and chased me,” Daphne continued. “You believe me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” the angel said. “He can’t hurt you if you’re with me.”

Daphne believed this to her very core. Her angel was powerful—she could sense it in some odd way. “I want to go home,” Daphne murmured.

“I’ll take you to a farmhouse on the edge of the woods,” the angel said. “They’ll know how to get you home.”

Daphne felt good about this plan and was exhausted by her trying day. She fell asleep in the angel’s lap to the gentle caresses of her hair and soothing whispered singing of the angel’s voice.

8.

Daphne awoke at the cusp of dawn as the angel carried her toward the edge of the forest. Before they broke the tree line, with the sky beginning to warm with the coming light of the day, the angel set her down on the edge of a still verdant pasture. She looked Daphne in the eyes, straightened her hair one last time, and smiled a hauntingly sad smile.

“The people who live in the house are named Aldridge and Rebecca,” the angel told her. “They were friends of mine from another life. If you tell them you were lost in the woods and call them by name, they’ll know I sent you to them and will help you.”

Daphne threw her arms around the angel and hugged her tightly, whispering into the angel’s silken hair, “my sister says all the old stories of the forest being haunted are just fairy tales, but they’re true, aren’t they?”

“Enough are to be cautious,” the angel said.

“But there should be good stories too, about you,” Daphne said.

“Maybe someday,” the angel replied. “Go before the sun comes up, so I can watch to make sure you make it to the door.”

Daphne reluctantly pulled herself from the angel’s embrace and began her slow walk across the pasture to the little farmhouse. She looked back when she reached the wooden back steps. The angel was standing at the edge of the forest, watching her as she’d promised. The rising sun crossed the field like a golden wave, bathing the angel in white light that seemed to almost emanate from within. It felt like Daphne was looking through the angel, into her true self, and what she saw was the essence of kindness and purity.

The angel vanished into the woods, leaving Daphne to ache a little at her departure. She steeled herself all the same, and knocked on the farmhouse door. A middle-aged couple came along quickly, and didn’t seem remotely surprised to see her on their back steps.

“Aren’t you a sight,” the man said, smiling down to her with paternal warmth.

“I got lost in the woods,” Daphne said. “I was told to ask for Aldridge and Rebecca.”

“You’ve come to the right place,” a woman called from the kitchen. “Come in and we’ll get you on your way home before you know it.”

Daphne took one last glance at the woods before stepping inside as Aldridge moved to allow her in.

“She’s gone by now,” Aldridge said, “but you may see her again someday, if you’ve got a sharp eye.” He winked to her as she passed him into the house and she hoped, truly hoped, he was right.

9.

Daphne kept a sharp eye out in the months to come, but didn’t see her angel again for another two years and then only in a picture. She was in the library with her mother, walking through one of the older sections to see her sister at her new job, and there she was, Daphne’s angel, dressed as the Harvest Festival Princess in a picture above a plaque on the wall.

Daphne started to say she knew the girl, that it was the angel who had saved her, but then she saw the date—1955.

Part 6: Blood Red Riding Hood

Autumn 2005 – Annabelle

1.

Annabelle hadn’t thought anything could make her wish for the fast-paced action of her senior year of high school, but the drudgery of the miserable year after certainly managed to soften her opinion of how glad she was to be rid of the K-12 experience. She hadn’t taken much in her life seriously, and applying to college wasn’t any different. Her half-assed score on the SATs, slightly above average GPA accrued through some truly bizarre combination of classes, and no extra curricular activities or volunteer hours set her apart as a college applicant easily dismissed. She then compounded this folly by applying to colleges based on how far away from her home they were and how creepy the architecture was. She threw the University of Alaska Anchorage into the mix simply because it seemed completely unlike Vigil’s Rest.

After she clipped her way through the thin envelope rejections from all seven schools she’d applied to, her parents demanded she enroll in community college or get a job. Baskin Robbins seemed like a better option at the time of the ultimatum, but was quickly losing its appeal in practice. As the weather cooled and customers eager for ice cream vanished, Annabelle found she spent most of her time at Baskin Robbins cleaning the already clean glass display cases and staring off into space, ruing just about everything.

Halloween was coming up, the trees were bedecked in their full autumnal glory, the town was abuzz about high school football and homecoming, and Annabelle hated it all. The cluster of loyal friend’s she’d had through high school promised all summer they would be home nearly every weekend to spend time with her, but then the reality of plane tickets from colleges in Virginia, New York, and Wisconsin put a stop to that plan before it even started. They were all off enjoying college, and she was watching leaves blowing across the parking lot, waiting for her closing shift to end.

For most of September, Annabelle’s favorite teacher, Ms. Jensen the phys-ed instructor, would stop by to say hello, give her something of a pep talk, and buy a small, fat free, frozen strawberry milk. This was part of the other damnable hell about her choice in jobs. The ice cream parlor was right around the corner from the very same high school of her spectacular mediocrity, which meant reminders of what she should have done better strolled through the door on a fairly regular basis. Annabelle needed something, anything to happen to break up the crushing boredom of being the only 18 year old high school graduate in the entire town who knew she belonged somewhere else.

She popped her head up from the stretch of counter flanked by the ice cream display freezers when the bell above the door rang. She couldn’t completely remember having laid her head down or for how long she’d slept, but the sky outside was well on its way past dusk and the street lights at the other end of the parking lot were already on.

The girl who walked into the ice cream shop couldn’t have been much older than Annabelle, although she didn’t recognize her from school. She was around the same average height as Annabelle, but far more polished and beauty queen-esque in how she tended her appearance. Her strawberry blond hair stood in a version of a 50’s flip. The clothes she wore clothing store with a blindfold on, picking at random until she’d pulled together a complete outfit.

“Hey,” Annabelle said, still wiping the bleariness from her eyes with the heel of her palm. She glanced back over her shoulder to see how long until closing time. The analogue ice cream clock had little cones in place of numbers, stating it was always time for ice cream. She still had an hour and a half until closing, which meant she couldn’t run off the customer. As she became more focused, and got a better look at the woman who had awoken her, Annabelle wasn’t sure she wanted to run her off. The girl with the rockabilly hairdo and chaotic sense of fashion was a knockout, which wasn’t something Annabelle normally would have noticed, but in the particular, rarified fluorescent lighting of the Baskin Robbins at night, it was pretty hard not to.

“Hello,” the girl said in reply as she wandered along the L-shaped display freezers, inspecting the 31 flavors.

That particular Baskin Robbins didn’t actually have 31 flavors. Annabelle had counted and recounted, always coming up with 29. She wasn’t sure what the other two flavors were supposed to be or where they’d gone, but they never had more than 29. She’d thought a busybody customer would notice and demand a free cone or something for being traumatized by a lack of 31 complete flavors being in attendance, but nobody ever did.

The woman stopped on the far side of the L from the ice cream cake display near the door, in the vicinity of what Annabelle thought of as the pedestrian flavors, and her face lit up. Annabelle hadn’t seen anyone ever react to ice cream in quite that way. Even children weren’t as brazenly joyous over the mountains of ice cream in the cases. Annabelle wandered closer, not out of a sense of duty to do her job correctly, but more out of curiosity. When she smiled and her eyes lit up the way they did, the girl was really quite stunning. Annabelle got closer to see what the girl was beaming at, but paused when she noticed the lovely shade of ice blue the girl’s eyes were.

“You have butterscotch,” the girl said. Strange tears began to flood across the bottom lashes of her bright blue eyes.

Annabelle had definitely never seen anyone react this way to ice cream.

“Um…yeah,” Annabelle said. “It’s kind of a retro thing.”

“I haven’t had butterscotch ice cream in years,” the girl said.

“Do you want a sample?”

“No, no thank you,” the girl said. “I wouldn’t want to ruin the memory it goes with.”

“Yeah, I have the same thing with mint chocolate chip,” Annabelle lied, although she couldn’t precisely think of a reason for it. Maybe she wanted the blue-eyed girl to like her. Annabelle had spent so much time in high school trying to convince everyone that she didn’t care what people thought of her that she actually began to believe it. She couldn’t think of a valid reason for the façade to continue especially since this new girl sparked a genuine interest. “I’m sorry. That was a lie. I don’t have any ice cream related memories.”

The girl covered her mouth with a delicate white hand and laughed. It was such a lovely sound, so pristine and controlled for pitch, timber, and length. Annabelle couldn’t immediately put her finger on it, but she thought she’d heard that kind of laugh before.

“I’m Debbie,” the girl said.

“Annabelle.” Annabelle reached her hand over the freezer to shake the girl’s hand. It was ice cold to the touch and softer than baby goose down. “Are you new to town?”

The girl shook her head. “I’ve lived here my whole life and then some.”

Annabelle definitely knew the feeling. She was having a hard time wanting to let go of Debbie’s hand. It was so soft, so smooth, and so well-kempt. By comparison, Annabelle’s hand looked ruddy and common with chewed nails and dry cuticles. They actually ended up holding hands for a time while each inspected the other’s fingers. The strangeness of the situation struck Annabelle first, although she didn’t pull her hand away because of it.

“You have really nice fingernails,” Annabelle said. “I mean, that’s why I was still holding your hand. To look at them.” She couldn’t believe it. She was no better at talking to girls than she was at talking to boys. It was a people thing, it must have been, because this was the exact sort of stupid thing she would do whenever she tried to talk to a guy in high school. She must have winced or given some outward sign of her discomfort because, when she tried to pull her hand away, Debbie refused to let go.

“No, it’s okay,” Debbie said. “Your hand is really warm. It’s nice.” She smiled in a coquettish way that also seemed familiar to Annabelle, but, more importantly, seemed knee-weakeningly hot.

“I just…I mean, do you want some ice cream?” Annabelle asked, a strange sense of comfort and familiarity washing over her when she gave in and accepted holding hands with Debbie as something they were both interested in.

“No, I just came in here to remember,” Debbie said. “At first, anyway.”

Annabelle smiled and looked down demurely. She caught a glimpse of herself in the reflective stainless steel top of the freezer. She never wore makeup to work. Her auburn hair was in a mundane ponytail. And she always hated how she looked in the pink polo, pink visor, and khaki pants that passed as the uniform for Baskin Robbins. She didn’t just think she looked like a dork, she definitely felt like one.

“I don’t normally dress like this, you know?” Annabelle said.

Debbie smiled again. “I know,” she said. “It’s a uniform. Even astronauts have to wear uniforms at work.”

Annabelle really felt like Debbie got her; oh how she hoped Debbie got her. She needed a new friend, and…there was something else there she wasn’t quite sure of, but she thought she might need that too. She didn’t dress, talk, or behave like any popular person Annabelle had ever known, but there was something decidedly cool about Debbie.

“It was nice meeting you, Annabelle,” Debbie said, “but I should get going.”

Their hands slipped from one another and Annabelle immediately felt less-than for it. Debbie walked to the door, hands pressed across the bar handle in the middle, and glanced back over her shoulder to Annabelle. “See you later, gator,” she said with a wink so brief, so fluid, and so charming that Annabelle couldn’t be absolutely certain it had even happened. But then she was out into the night and walking across the empty parking lot toward Vigil’s Grove.

Annabelle lifted the hand so long occupied by Debbie’s and smelled it, hoping for a hint of lotion or perfume that might have stuck to it. It smelled organic like dried leaves and lawn clippings. The mysterious smell only added to the mystique of Debbie and all Annabelle knew was she had to know more.

2.

The next day, Annabelle went to a vintage clothing store and did precisely what she imagined Debbie had done by closing her eyes and walking awkwardly up and down the aisles gathering items of clothing at random. She didn’t know if that’s how Debbie had done it, and judging from how many people and things she nearly knocked down in the process, she kind of thought it probably wasn’t right. She came up with a bedazzled jean jacket, a pink poodle skirt, camouflage combat boots, and a red t-shirt from a White Stripes concert that had a fading iron-on decal. The woman at the counter added fishnets to the ensemble, and who was Annabelle to argue? They made as much sense as the rest of it.

She tucked the clothes in a bag and hid it away at the back of her closet, unsure why she’d even done it or where she would wear the chaotic outfit. She felt closer to Debbie simply for purchasing it.

That night at work, she promised herself she wouldn’t fall asleep. She wasn’t planning on doing any actual work during the really slow hours, but she didn’t want to miss even the tiniest chance Debbie might happen by again. It was a quarter to ten and closing time before Debbie appeared. It really was an appearance as Annabelle had been vigilant in watching for her across the empty parking lot and suddenly she was pulling open the glass door without being spotted. Debbie was dressed in a green, plaid flannel shirt over a black turtleneck, a floral sun skirt that ran all the way to the ground and then some, and dollar-store flip-flops. This second eclectic outfit gave Annabelle all the proof she needed that the previous night’s clothes hadn’t been born out of a laundry day necessity.

Annabelle was prepared this time with hints of eyeliner, concealer on the patch of possible zits rising on her forehead, and just enough mascara to make her eyelashes pop. She didn’t want to look desperate—maybe 25% more attractive.

“Hey, Debbie,” Annabelle said, trying desperately to affect a breezy posture against the sundae making station opposite the counter. “How’s things…how are things going…how are you?”

“Peachy-keen, jellybean,” Debbie said with an adorable wrinkle of her button nose.

“That’s cool,” Annabelle said, focusing on not having another instance of word-salad. “Are you here for some ice cream?”

“Nope,” Debbie said, “I’m here for you. I noticed the other night that you close at ten. I thought we could go do something.”

“Yeah! I mean, sure,” Annabelle said. “I’d have to change first, but sure, I can do something. Let me mop the floors, count the register, and we can go.”

Debbie took a seat at one of the tables anchored to the floor and adjoining benches with metal bars, sitting sideways with her ankles crossed beneath the seat, hands folded in her lap. “I’ll wait right here.”

3.

The apartment over her parent’s garage was separate enough for Annabelle to not feel like a total loser in bringing Debbie back to it to change. Debbie wandered up and down the wood paneling walls covered with posters from punk bands as though she were in a fine art gallery while Annabelle quickly changed in the bathroom.

“Do you want to go see the pumpkins?” Debbie called to her from the bedroom.

“Um…sure,” Annabelle replied as she pulled up the fishnets. She didn’t know anyone under the age of fifty who was actually interested in the displays of pumpkins at the harvest festival, but Debbie was so obviously on another plane of alternative that Annabelle had to assume there was some anti-establishment angle to the outing she simply wasn’t cool enough to get.

Annabelle emerged from the bathroom in her new vintage collage of an outfit, walking on pins and needles until she heard what Debbie thought of it. Debbie’s reaction flooded across her face in a rapid-fire emotion gun. She finally settled on confusion, although Annabelle thought she saw amusement, anger, and maybe even a little lust—the last one might have been wishful thinking.

“You hate it,” Annabelle said. She loathed herself for falling back on the stereotypical female defense mechanism of self-recrimination.

“No, I just…do you normally dress like that?”

“No,” Annabelle admitted with a huff. “You made it look so cool, so much like you didn’t care what the world said about fashion, that I just thought I’d give it a try.”

“I’d like to get to know you, and I can’t do that if you’re just mirroring me, you big goof,” Debbie said with her beauty queen smile that still seemed familiar to Annabelle. “Now go back to your closet and come up with something that will really razz my berries.”

Annabelle could glean from the context what razzing berries meant, but she didn’t really feel like putting in a ton more effort after her initial attempt had been shot down. She came back out in blue jeans, a zip-up red hoodie, and matching converse. Strangely, the mundane outfit seemed to razz Debbie’s berries, which made Annabelle question her interpretation of the saying. She linked arms with Annabelle and they went off walking through the chilly suburban night to hopefully catch the harvest festival’s gates before they shut.

The fairgrounds were well past closed when they finally strolled up at 11 PM. Debbie seemed so disappointed by the closed gates and darkened lights that Annabelle half expected her to call off the whole night and go home.

“I don’t know why I remember it staying open all night,” Debbie said as she stared at the sign that indicated the grounds closed at 10 PM. “Funny how our memories of things don’t quite match the things themselves. Total foggin’ in the noggin’.”

“Yeah, I get that.” The funny thing was, Annabelle really did understand. She’d made a concerted effort to seek out things she’d loved about the speck of a town in rural Vermont since graduation in hopes of finding some nostalgia to hold onto until she could make her escape to wherever—probably New York. But it never quite went the way she thought it would. The carnival at the Elk’s Lodge was a bust. The 4th of July parade disappointed. And the rides at the county fair couldn’t hold a candle to Six Flags or even Disney World. She and Debbie locked eyes and something passed between them on an emotional, wordless level, a shared misery of some kind; at least, that’s what Annabelle thought happened. She seized the moment, stepped across the space separating them, and scooped Debbie’s face in her hands to kiss her with awkward fervor. Debbie kissed back, tilting her head ever so slightly up to take a more demure role. Annabelle pulled away first, not entirely sure why she thought kissing a girl was something she should do or if it even meant anything when girls kissed. It sure didn’t seem to on reality TV or late night commercials. The experience was so different from the lone kiss with a boy that she’d had at a boy/girl party freshman year. Debbie’s lips were softer, smoother, and cooler than the chapped lips of the random freshman boy she’d had to kiss during spin the bottle. Kissing a girl was decadent by comparison.

“That was probably over the line,” Annabelle said.

“You’re a total dolly,” Debbie said with a little giggle. “Why wouldn’t I want you to kiss me?”

“So you probably kiss a lot of girls…”

“Not as many as I’d like,” Debbie said with a surprisingly genuine smirk. “Listen, for freams like us, the world can’t always understand what flips our lid, but that doesn’t mean what we do is meaningless.”

“Freams?”

“Outsiders,” Debbie explained. “The rules say girls go with boys. Being girls who like girls makes us freams.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Annabelle said. “Lesbianism and drunken bisexuality is pretty commonplace.”

“It is? That’s just tops! Here’s hoping it stays that way.” Debbie grabbed Annabelle by the back of the neck, pulled her in for another kiss, this time leaning into the act with the force of her tongue and an exploratory hand slipping inside the front of Annabelle’s hoodie.

4.

Annabelle and Debbie went back to the garage apartment. They cuddled on the old pullout couch, watching the Nick at Nite network, with Annabelle resting her head in Debbie’s lap while Debbie played with her hair. Annabelle wasn’t sure if this was what lesbianism entailed, but if it was, she was all in. She began to drift off to the sound of black and white reruns and the soft, cool fingers stroking her hair. A few snippets of the television show, she wasn’t sure which one, managed to filter through and she heard a lot of the slang in it that Debbie used. There wasn’t anything particularly alarming about the realization in her dozing state; if Debbie took her lingo from TV Land that made her even cooler as far as Annabelle was concerned. Still, the Gidget mannerisms didn’t appear to be affected—it was all too polished not to be primary nature.

As she slipped closer and closer to genuine sleep, Annabelle thought she heard Debbie discussing something with someone else in the room. The discussion was turning toward an argument, although Annabelle couldn’t pull herself from sleep enough to discern why. Her limbs were incredibly heavy, her eyelids almost impossible to pry open, and Debbie was still stroking her hair in such a relaxing fashion that the best Annabelle could manage to deduce in her semiconscious state was that there was a dark figure in a shadow in the corner of the room where there shouldn’t have been a shadow and Debbie was arguing with it. A shudder ran up Annabelle’s spine, although she still couldn’t drag herself from sleep.

“I can’t do that to her,” was the last thing Annabelle heard Debbie say before she fully succumbed to sleep.

5.

Annabelle awoke alone the following morning with no memory of when Debbie left. A faded newspaper clipping sat on the other pillow, yellowed with age, and on the verge of disintegration. Annabelle carefully lifted the scrap. It was intentionally cut in such a way that left the date of the paper’s publication along the top edge: August 31st, 1955.

The newspaper story stated the search for two local teens, Deborah Poole and Philip Cox, was called off after two weeks. Their disappearance was blamed on a drifter who was last seen in Vigil’s Wood although the police were unable to locate the man for questioning. A grainy picture of the couple in front of a Ferris wheel at the county fair was believed to be the last photograph of them alive. Annabelle squinted at the picture. When that didn’t disprove the likeness, she retrieved the hobby magnifying glass from her desk for a closer look. Enough doubt remained in the complete implausibility of it, but Annabelle was nearly certain the girl in the photograph was Debbie.

Annabelle walked through the rest of her day in something of a fog. She didn’t have much experience with young love, or any experience really when it came to relationships, but she was fairly certain she was falling in love with Debbie. Still, she didn’t have Debbie’s phone number, didn’t know where she lived, hadn’t even asked what her last name was yet, and couldn’t figure out what the hell the newspaper clipping meant; she knew what she felt though, and she thought it was love.

Work crawled by while she waited for Debbie. They hadn’t departed with any sort of plan to meet up again, but Annabelle felt it was fated. In the waning parts of dusk, Annabelle stood at the enormous picture windows of Baskin Robbins, staring out across the parking lot, watching the bare-limbed oaks of Vigil’s Grove gently sway in a light autumn wind. The grove was once a true forest, or so Annabelle’s grandmother was fond of saying. The encroachment of farmland, which then gave way to suburban sprawl, had whittled the once legendary forest into a few dozen acres of slowly shrinking wilderness. Try as Annabelle’s grandmother might, she couldn’t seem to get her granddaughter to care.

A moment before Annabelle was going to turn from the window and head back to the counter, she thought she saw Debbie walking quickly across the far edge of the parking lot toward a makeshift trail into Vigil’s Grove. All caution was thrown to the wind, and Annabelle raced out the door with barely the foresight to snag her red hoodie on the way. She ran across the parking lot, calling Debbie’s name at least three times, but couldn’t catch up to her before the pale figure disappeared into the tree line.

Annabelle jogged through the tall grass of the field leading up to the wood’s edge, following the trail blazed by other teenagers who used the cover of the trees for all sorts of illicit activities, but stopped just shy of entering the grove. She was afraid, not only of the darkness, of the possibility of becoming lost, but of the mystery that surrounded Debbie. Was she actually Deborah Poole, lost for fifty years, somehow returned to the world in the exact same condition she’d vanished in? Or was there something less supernatural but no less sinister about their brief, yet intense romance?

Annabelle had to know.

She ran into the darkness of the forest after the fleeting image of a white t-shirt. She stumbled over unsure footing on rocks and exposed roots she couldn’t see. An occasional break in the tree canopy allowed enough moonlight through from time to time so that she never lost complete sight of Debbie, although she seemed to be making very little or no progress in catching her. Exhausted, out of breath, and with two sore ankles from nearly turning them both a dozen times stepping on uneven footing, Annabelle began to feel another, less welcoming sensation. She was being followed.

She began spending equal time chasing the elusive figure of Debbie in white and looking back over her shoulder to an equally elusive black silhouette that vanished among the trees whenever she chanced a glance backward. Annabelle stopped at the top of a low rise in the woods, with the increasingly overgrown trail leading down into the oldest parts of the forest ahead of her. Debbie, at the farthest edge of Annabelle’s limited night vision seemed to stop as well. Annabelle gasped for breath, holding suddenly when she heard a snap of a twig behind her. And then, as if intentional to make sure Annabelle knew, a second twig snapped. She glanced back. The slender, dark figure was closer, much closer, standing perfectly still in the center of the trail, making no move to hide.

Annabelle ran without concern for finding Debbie or conserving energy anymore. She hurtled down the path, low-hanging branches tearing at her clothes and hair, heart thundering in her ears, with no other goal in mind than escape. The path wound farther and farther downhill into a shallow ravine that swallowed the tiny thread of what was once a path, vanishing entirely into sylvan wilderness. Annabelle’s shoes crunched through dry leaves and twigs, ricocheting off half-buried rocks and fallen branches until her foot finally caught on one, sending her sprawling into a miniscule clearing bathed in the cold white light of the waning moon.

Annabelle grasped her turned ankle. The joint burned with agonizing pain and she knew any further running was out of the question. She searched the damp leaf-litter around her. The earthy smell of decay on the forest floor flooded up as she rustled through the natural compost. Her hands struck something hard and she grasped it, pulling it free from the detritus. She dropped her would-be weapon and recoiled from it—she’d found a muddy human femur. Scooting away from the bone in a seated position, she rustled across other bones, and wooden totems on propped up sticks holding scraps of clothing and other various trophies of the dead. Her panic-induced tunnel vision widened, her eyes grew accustomed to the new light source, and she came to the chilling realization that she was in the midst of a field of bones.

The dark figure, slender, not much taller than Annabelle stood at the edge of the clearing, but came no closer. Annabelle tried to back away, still without regaining her feet. Debbie appeared on the opposite side of the clearing, completely focused on the dark figure as though Annabelle wasn’t even present. As with the night before, Annabelle couldn’t hear anything above a thin, unintelligible whisper on the other side of the conversation from Debbie.

“You can’t have her,” Debbie said sternly.

The dark figure whispered her response.

“I’m saying ‘no’ now,” Debbie said.

The dark figure reared up as though a coiled snake to strike and flew at Annabelle’s stricken form. A brief flash of the moonlight over the suddenly exposed face of her attacker scared a decade of life from Annabelle as a monstrous, pale face, more fangs and death than human anymore, rushed toward her. She closed her eyes in anticipation of the impact, only to have the hit never come. When she opened her eyes, Debbie stood defensively over her with the dark figure knocked to her right, impaled lifelessly on an outstretched limb of a recently fallen tree.

“She knew,” Debbie whispered as she helped Annabelle up onto shaky legs.

“Knew what?”

“Knew I would take her place as you would take mine.” Debbie brushed a few errant dead leaves from Annabelle’s hair. She smiled, showing off jagged fangs of her own.

Everything Annabelle had wanted, escape from her old life, a change of scenery, melted into Debbie’s embrace and she let go. Taking the new promise of eternal love without question as the painful teeth sunk into her neck.

Part 7: Unburied Bones

Autumn 2005 – Annabelle and Debbie

1.

Annabelle awoke to find rain falling on her already open eyes. She considered it awaking simply because there was no word for what had happened to her. She’d died, she’d felt herself pass away from her body, waited in darkness a moment, but before she could fall into the oblivion of black that was beckoning her, she felt something tied to Debbie pulling her back until she was once again within her body. And that’s all it really felt like to her. Like a cord cut and retied, the severing between her true self and her body was permanent even when the ends were tied together. She knew she was unique in the world; she was removed from her body, knew what it was like to be disconnected from self, and knew the nothingness that existed on the other side, only to return into her flawed, dead body, made new by her re-inhabiting of it. A smile played across her lips when she realized one other person, one other beautiful person, knew the secrets she knew.

She smiled up to Debbie, blinking away the rain falling, which hadn’t bothered her in the slightest for some reason. Debbie returned the smile. She reached up and touched Debbie’s stunning face, truly seeing and feeling her as if for the first time with senses well beyond the power and number she formerly had.

“Why didn’t you close my eyes?” Annabelle asked.

“Dead eyelids don’t actually stay closed unless you hold them,” Debbie said. “That’s why the ancient Greeks put coins over the eyes of corpses—to hold them shut.”

“Creepy,” Annabelle said dreamily.

Debbie helped Annabelle to her feet although Annabelle suspected she could have leapt from a lying down position to hold onto the tippy-top of the highest tree in the area if she’d felt so inclined. Debbie’s hand found its way into hers; their fingers interlaced.

“Come on,” Debbie said, giving Annabelle’s hand a little tug. “I should show you our home.”

Annabelle dutifully followed Debbie down barely broken trails into the deepest, darkest parts of the forest that had likely gone untouched by living human hands for hundreds of years. She half expected the home to be a medieval castle and half expected it to be a high tech mansion or possibly some mix of the two. What she found was a small, windowless stone hut nestled within an overgrown grove of hemlock trees that housed a colony of spiders. Debbie continued walking toward the hut, but Annabelle went no farther.

Annabelle took a step back from the hut. Something about the place screamed at her through her new senses; one of which she was quickly considering her “creepy detector” as it seemed to sense otherworldly things like ghosts. This hut, this place within the woods, was like sitting in a pot of boiling water at a heavy metal concert for how thoroughly it bombarded her creepy detector.

“I’m not going in there,” she said. “Not ever.”

Debbie turned back. Her face was a mask of hurt, confusion, and anger. “You don’t want to stay with me?”

“I do, more than anything, but we don’t have to stay here,” Annabelle said pleadingly. “You take her place—I take yours. It doesn’t have to be that way.” She didn’t know how she knew so much about Debbie all of a sudden, but she did and what she knew of Debbie’s connection to the creature and the hut frightened her beyond words.

Debbie blinked as though someone shone a light too brightly in her eyes. “No, she said…”

“It doesn’t have to be the way she said.” Annabelle dropped Debbie’s hand, taking instead her confused, frighten face between her palms, forcing Debbie to meet her stare. “You told her no. I heard you.”

“The woods is the only safe place for…”

“For her,” Annabelle said.

“I’m not her, and you’re not me.” Debbie glanced back over her shoulder to the ancient stone hut she’d called home for fifty years. Already it was looking smaller, less important, and like it would fade from her memory in no time at all. She was free from Maggie and the home they’d shared, but a sinking realization settled over her and she wanted to scream at the quickly withering corpse of her former mentor, savior, tormenter—so many roles Maggie had played in her life, but the one truth she’d always held back that kept Debbie at her side, and now she’d died without revealing it. “She told me she would tell me someday.” Debbie began to cry, tearing herself away from Annabelle’s hands as a storm of rage began building in her that she wished to vent upon the stone hut, to tear it rock by rock from the ground until there was nothing left. “You told me you would tell me the truth!” she screamed at the darkened sky.

Annabelle rushed to her side, feeling the hurt rising in Debbie in ways that went well beyond empathy. A bond existed between them bound by something completely inhuman in origin, and it fed tiny tastes of feelings across the tethers that held them together.

“What did she promise to tell you?”

“What we are,” Debbie said. “She knew what we are, but she wouldn’t tell me. Grace thought I was a ghost, the people I helped thought I was an angel, and Maggie referred to us as witches although I know none of those are right.”

Annabelle laughed, actually laughed, which was something she hadn’t done in…she couldn’t remember how long. It felt good, as though she’d been laughing wrong her whole life and was suddenly instructed in how to do it properly. She kept laughing to revel in the feeling until she realized she probably sounded crazy. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m not laughing at you. I didn’t know laughing could feel like that. I was…it doesn’t matter. We’re vampires, baby, vampires.”

Debbie didn’t seem at all shocked by the revelation. She swallowed and furrowed her brow, fighting back a fresh onslaught of tears. “How do you know?”

Annabelle slipped her hand into Debbie’s, once again interlacing their fingers. “Let me show you.”

2.

Back at Annabelle’s above the garage apartment, they scrolled through web pages on her old desktop Compaq computer, catching Debbie up on all the things that had happened in vampire lore since 1955. As interested as Annabelle thought Debbie would be in discovering what she was, she seemed far more interested in the computer and stream of information flowing across the internet into it.

Debbie continued with her research of vampires, picking up quickly on how to use the computer and internet on her own. Annabelle, already tired of the material of vampire boys seducing boring high school girls, or vampire bounty hunters, or People’s sexiest men alive dressed in frilly vampire clothes, before they even started, lay on the bed, closing off her individual senses to investigate how many new ones she had. Her conclusion was that she now had nine. In addition to the usual compliment of hearing, seeing, touch, smell, and taste, which were all heightened well beyond human levels, she now could feel electromagnetic waves of living or electronic things moving in relation to other things, sense supernatural entities with her creepy detector, gained fleeting images into Debbie’s personal state when they were close enough to each other, and see halos around living things that spoke of their state in the world in what she assumed psychic people called auras.

“Are we to the point of hooking up yet?” Annabelle asked, already bored with the cataloguing of her new senses.

“What do you mean?” Debbie asked, her eyes never leaving the computer screen.

“I mean, we’ve gone through hanging out and a little making out, but I don’t know if that counts as hooking up, and that’s supposed to happen before we’re together so we’ll know if we’re compatible.” Annabelle rolled onto her side to give Debbie a long look over. She certainly hoped she was compatible with the undead goddess sitting at her computer because if she wasn’t, there wasn’t likely to be anyone on the planet she would fit with.

Debbie laughed, looked back over her shoulder, and smiled to Annabelle in her coquettish way. “Is that how dating goes these days?”

“Well, yeah, I mean, the dinner and a movie stuff is kind of outdated, don’t you think?”

Debbie shook her head and laughed again. “I’m from the time period that invented dinner and a movie dates, but sure, I think we’re to the point of hooking up—we called it going all the way. Should we move that to the front burner?”

“We could, I mean, I want to, but I don’t want to tear you away from…” Annabelle scrunched up her face knowing she shouldn’t ask what she was about to ask, but she also knew she couldn’t help herself. “Did you…did you have sex with that thing in the woods?”

“Her name was Maggie. And I know she must seem skeevy to you now,” Debbie said, “but she wasn’t always like that. We had a falling out a long time ago and haven’t spoken too much since. We were sort of together for awhile, but she didn’t like to be touched and she didn’t want to be loved, so we never went down that road.” Debbie could tell her answer put Annabelle at ease, and Annabelle could tell from their emotional tether that Debbie wasn’t lying, but was very sad things had progressed the way they had. Debbie’s mood shifted with an accompanying smile. “What’s your tale, nightingale? Are you a fast girl?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m a Kama-Sutra master with porn star skills.” Annabelle laughed and fell back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Even as a vampire I can’t be cool around you. I’m a mega virgin, like every freaking part of me is pure in nearly every sense.”

Debbie spun the computer chair around entirely, sitting in her demure, yet attentive way straight out of the 50s with her knees together, hands folded in her lap, and ankles crossed beneath the chair. “We’re getting to be tight here, Anna-Bee, so why don’t you spill with what ‘nearly every sense’ means?”

Annabelle felt powerfully embarrassed, not just because she hadn’t really expected Debbie to pick up on that part of the comment, but also because she’d never admitted to anyone what the caveat on her virginity really meant to her. She’d also never had a nickname before and really liked Anna-Bee. She grabbed one of the pillows from the bed and pulled it over her face tightly to scream out a little muffled embarrassment. She slid the pillow up her face just enough to uncover her mouth. “I’ve played with myself, which is totally normal. Every health class teacher says so.” The silence wore on for too long, and Annabelle suddenly was afraid Debbie might have pulled her vanishing act. She pulled down the pillow, but found Debbie not only still on the chair, but suddenly very interested in what Annabelle was saying.

“That’s not what I was told by my teachers, but they might have meant two different things,” Debbie said with a wry smirk. “Why don’t you show me?”

The request was the kinkiest thing Annabelle had ever been asked. Sure, like most teenage girls, she’d had kinkier things shouted at her from the windows of moving vehicles, but actually asked by someone with a sincere hope of the answer being yes—that hadn’t ever happened to her. It made her feel special, wanted, and attractive when Debbie looked at her the way she was, with hopeful blue ice eyes sparkling with a little lust, and despite all Annabelle’s misgivings about…well, just about everything, she really wanted to give Debbie what she asked for, even if it meant possibly making a complete fool of herself, and Annabelle was fairly certain she was going to do that.

“Um…okay,” Annabelle said nervously, peeking out from beneath the pillow to judge Debbie’s sincerity in the request. “Like, right now?”

Debbie nodded emphatically.

Annabelle had changed out of her dirty work uniform when they’d arrived home, dressing in comfy sweats and a t-shirt, which didn’t remotely feel sexy to her. Still, she wanted to believe she could be sexy by virtue of action even if she still felt like a mess. Annabelle replaced the pillow under her head, closed her eyes, and let her hands make their way down her body to perform the act that to that point had been her sex life. She slipped both hands inside her sweatpants, inside her cotton underwear, and began the slow, teasing strokes on the outsides of her lips she always did to get herself in the mood. She felt silly and imagined she probably looked silly, but Debbie wasn’t laughing so she kept going. When she was aroused enough to slip a finger inside herself, she did so with a little murmur of pleasure escaping her lips. She rolled her index finger around inside herself until it was damp and slippery enough to draw it back up to the hard nub that was the source of all her orgasms to that point. Nervously, because she was well past the point of murmurs as she rubbed herself to actual moans, she opened her eyes to see if Debbie was regretting her request. Quite the opposite, Debbie looked to be on the verge of launch, eyes gleaming, lips wetted, antsy in her seat.

“Can I help?” Debbie asked in a soft, demure tone that made Annabelle shiver.

Annabelle nodded. Debbie joined her on the bed, tentatively at first, following Annabelle’s arm down into the top of her sweatpants with her own hand. Annabelle guided Debbie’s cool fingers to the same work she’d been about, and helped her to find the places Annabelle enjoyed being touched. Debbie was a quick study, and the added, foreign fingers quickly changed the entire nature of the familiar act to something new and wonderful. Annabelle wanted to kiss Debbie, but each time she opened her eyes, she found Debbie engrossed in watching the process of Annabelle’s arousal as it spread through her body. Annabelle turned her attention from watching Debbie’s profile to inspecting her partner’s body, finding it equally piqued and powerfully erotic when experienced through her marvelous new senses.

Annabelle climaxed shortly before sunrise. Her strangled sounds of excitement, somewhat stifled through practice as she’d had to be discreet in her self-pleasuring to that point as not to advertise what she was doing through the thin windows of her only slightly separated apartment, seemed to set off a new chime in Debbie who suddenly became very interested in kissing Annabelle. They made out through the afterglow, although Debbie always stopped Annabelle’s hands when they made moves to undress her. Annabelle eventually gave up, and enjoyed the comfortable cuddled position with Debbie’s fingertips gently stroking up and down the length of her arm.

“Is the sunlight going to kill us?” Annabelle asked, watching the virgin glow of dawn seeping in through her drawn curtains.

“The daytime hurts and is disorienting, but it won’t kill us,” Debbie said. “Maggie also said sunlight exposes the evil within us to the world, although I don’t know if that’s true. I could always see the growing monster she was and she never came out during the day.”

“She didn’t even look human anymore,” Annabelle said. “How did she get that way?”

“I’m not sure, and she didn’t like talking about it. She said we were meant to be monsters and doing bad things would grow the monster inside us, but it never seemed to dissuade her from…I’m beginning to see why she didn’t like talking about these things.”

“I’m sorry,” Annabelle said. “I won’t ask anymore.”

“No, that’s probably part of what happened to her,” Debbie said. “We should talk about things. Even the bad stuff.” Debbie shifted on the bed until they were facing one another, laying on their sides, hands meeting in the middle for gentle caresses. “She killed people, a lot of people, and it was more than just to feed since I figured out a long time ago that we don’t actually have to eat all that much and animals work fine for food.” Debbie furrowed her brow and bit the inside of her cheek thoughtfully as if trying to recall something long forgotten. “I have a few pieces of her memories, but they’re all fragmented and chaotic. Part of her was in constant pain and that part made her dangerous.”

“So a good way to avoid becoming like her might be to avoid pain,” Annabelle said, “or seek out pleasure.” She ran her hand up the outside of Debbie’s arm in a gentle stroke. “Why won’t you let me touch you the way you touched me?”

“I’m not supposed to let people touch me there and it’s wrong for me to enjoy being touched there,” Debbie said, repeating the engrained demands her parents had thumped into her over most of her life. She’d used it so often to ward of Phil because she didn’t want him touching her at all, but with Annabelle it was different. “I know I would like it if you did, and that would be a sin.”

“It’s not wrong,” Annabelle said. “It’s all natural. Monkeys do it, so you know it’s something we’re supposed to do too.”

“Monkeys do it?”

“Sure, lot’s of animals do,” Annabelle said with confidence that she didn’t actually feel. She was fairly sure monkeys masturbated, but she didn’t actually know if anything else did. “When two people are together and really want to touch each other, I think it’s actually more wrong to not do it.” Annabelle was in completely uncharted territory and everything she was saying sounded like utter nonsense to her, but it did seem to be working on Debbie, and she desperately wanted to explore her… “Girlfriend,” Annabelle said. “We’re girlfriends now, so it’s okay when we do those things.” Yes, that was exactly the word for it. She wanted to explore her girlfriend’s body. It all sounded so natural and right when she thought of it in those terms.

“It won’t make us freaks?” Debbie asked.

“I think we’d be freaks if we were living together and didn’t do things to each other,” Annabelle said with an impish grin. She immediately regretted the implications since it meant that Debbie and Maggie must have been freaks since they lived together for decades and never did anything of the sort. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were…”

“It’s okay, really,” Debbie said. “We were freaks and for more reasons than just that.” She made something of a noncommittal bobble motion to her head as though she wanted to nod, but couldn’t quite go through with the gesture. “You’re right though. You should be allowed to touch me since I got to touch you.”

Annabelle snuggled in close to Debbie’s side. She pressed her hand flat against Debbie’s stomach on top of her shirt and began sliding it gently toward the top of her jeans. Her middle finger had no sooner slipped beneath the waistband than an insistent knock came at the door. Annabelle groaned and rolled away from Debbie, continuing off the bed to land spryly on the side nearest the door.

“That’ll be my mom,” Annabelle said, quickly retying the front of her sweatpants.

“I should hide!” Debbie said, quickly glancing around the room for someplace to conceal herself.

“Why?” Annabelle asked. “I want you to meet her. She’s been rudely asking me for years now if I’m gay, and I figure this will offer her some validation that not only was she right about her daughter, but this same questioning daughter managed to land someone as lovely and charming as you.”

“But then she’ll know,” Debbie protested.

“She apparently already did and wasn’t too tactful about pushing me toward the realization.” Annabelle padded over to the door, which was on the shaded side of the yard in the morning, and opened it, still mindful to keep out of direct contact even with the indirect sunlight. Her mother, a slightly older, shorter, and stockier version of Annabelle right down to the hair color and shape of her upturned pixie nose, stood on the wooden landing that wrapped around the second floor, holding a handful of mail addressed to Annabelle. “Good morning,” Annabelle said, beckoning her mother into the darkened interior of the apartment.

“Goodness, it’s always so dark in here,” her mother said. “Oh, and who is this?” she asked when her eyes adjusted to the low lighting, spotting Debbie standing stiffly at the end of the bed.

“Mother, this is Debbie Poole,” Annabelle said. “Debbie, this is my mom.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Debbie,” Annabelle’s mother said. She handed the mail to Annabelle and took a step closer, hand outstretched to shake.

“It’s nice to meet you too, Mrs….” Debbie began, crossing the equal distance to take the offered hand. A flash of panic passed over her face when she realized she didn’t even know Annabelle’s last name.

“Mrs. Eugene,” Annabelle’s mother said, “but you can call me Marne.”

Annabelle flopped in the bamboo papasan in the corner to leaf through her mail. “Debbie is my girlfriend,” Annabelle said, “she should be able to call you mom.”

Marne lit up like she’d just won something worth bragging about. She pulled Debbie in from the handshake for a proper hug. “That’s more like it,” she said, releasing a dazed Debbie from the embrace. “I don’t like to say I told you so…”

“Who are you kidding?” Annabelle asked, flicking discarded letters onto the floor. “You love saying that.”

“She’s right,” Marne said to Debbie, “I do love saying it.”

“This is all…Annabelle, Annabelle Eugene, and I are…” Debbie stammered.

“Oh, my name’s not Eugene.” Annabelle turned the remaining envelope toward Debbie so she could see the name of the address. “My last name is Matthews. I was the spawn from a different father that got held over to her second life-mate. I have an older step-sister who is from dad’s previous marriage, and a young half-brother that came along after, but they’re both Eugenes too.”

“Poor Annabelle was only three when I got remarried, but her lousy excuse for a father wouldn’t let Gregory adopt her, so a Matthews she stayed,” Marne explained.

“Sperm donor, mom,” Annabelle corrected her. “Greg is my father; Allen was just a sperm donor.” Annabelle stood from the chair and gently ushered her mother back toward the door. “Now that we’ve caught Debbie up on our patchwork family, you should let us get some sleep. We were up late.”

“It was nice to have met you, Debbie,” Marne called back over her shoulder.

“It was nice to meet you too!” Debbie replied.

Annabelle shut the door behind her mother and conspicuously locked the door, including sliding the privacy chain into place. “Now, where were we?” Annabelle asked.

“You talk so casually with your mother,” Debbie said.

“Yeah, I’m an adult now,” Annabelle replied. “She’s been done raising me for years.”

“She wasn’t upset that I was in your room and that we’re…both girls?!” Debbie was building toward a healthy incredulity.

“Why would she be?” Annabelle asked. “She’s wanted me to start seriously dating for a long time and she’s been hinting I might be a lesbian since I was in 8th grade. I probably avoided girls simply to rebel against what she thought I was. Besides, I pay rent, so she doesn’t really have a say on what I do out here or who I do it with.”

“But you don’t even have the same last name!” Debbie ran her hands up into her hair as if she didn’t hold her skull it might actually explode.

“We’ve had to explain that almost my whole life, so we’re pretty practiced at covering it quickly without talking over each other,” Annabelle said, still not understanding why any of this was a problem. Slowly, painfully slowly, it dawned on her. “Shit, you’re a 1955 girl who has been living in a hole in the woods for the last fifty-five years. No wonder none of this makes sense. Civil rights, hybrid cars, grunge music, Richard Nixon, The L-Word…you missed all this stuff.”

“You’re saying it’s normal for you to speak to your mother the way you do?”

“It’d be weird if I didn’t.”

“Your mother is happy that you have a girlfriend in your room?”

“Only because she got to meet you, otherwise she’d feel slighted.”

“People get divorced and remarried and talk about it in polite company?”

“Half of all marriages end in divorce, but my mom’s never been divorced,” Annabelle explained. “She and Allen were just shacking up when I happened.”

“You’re a bastard?” Debbie asked in a hushed voice as though the very mention of the word at full volume might shatter Annabelle’s heart.

Annabelle laughed. “Well, yeah, but there are worse things to be.”

“Worse things than a dyke bastard?”

Now Annabelle positively roared with laughter, falling back into the papasan chair, holding her stomach. “I had no idea I was that alternative and cool,” Annabelle said between giggles. “Yes, I am a bastard child of sin from two pothead parents who grew up to be an ice cream vendor and muff-diver. It’d go on my headstone if I wasn’t also suddenly a vampire.” Annabelle’s laughter petered out after realizing what she’d just said. She felt so good, so incredibly strong, aware, energized, and confident all of a sudden that she really didn’t care what anyone but Debbie thought of her. The façade she’d once fostered as a defense mechanism came true when she knew on an instinctual level that humanity was beneath her and thus their opinions didn’t matter. She was in love with someone so amazing and special she couldn’t be bothered to care what anyone but Debbie thought. “We’re free to be whatever we want,” Annabelle said, “and that’s exactly what I want to be.”

Debbie sat down on the end of the bed in a state shy of total shock. Their relationship, which to that point had seemed to flow the other direction in who was the driving force, suddenly shifted on her and she knew she was once again beholden to someone to guide her through a world she didn’t understand. The major difference being, Annabelle was trustworthy and loving. “Tell me what I missed,” Debbie whispered.

“I can try,” Annabelle said, “but can it wait until after…?”

Debbie began to ask what Annabelle meant, but immediately received her answer when Annabelle stood from the chair, slid off her own shirt, and walked toward Debbie with a seductive swing to her slender hips that spoke of a newly awakened confidence. The come-hither look in Annabelle’s eyes, the pertness of her nubile breasts, and the way her tussled hair fell around her face wiped all doubt from Debbie’s mind. She tried to remember a time when she still believed she could have a life she wanted, but couldn’t, even with great effort, recall a time so hopeful. Even with Grace, even when New Haven hung in the air as an enticing possibility, part of her still couldn’t believe it would ever happen or ever work. As Annabelle leaned down to kiss her, Debbie tentatively lifted her hand to touch Annabelle’s exposed breasts. They were fine, normal, safe to explore, and trusted one another. Debbie let herself go to the moment and finally experienced what she never believed she would.

3.

Annabelle stayed awake for a stint after, although Debbie apparently ran fully into exhaustion. The entire process of losing her virginity, and that was what she considered what they’d just done, was fun, a little chaotic, and as much interesting as pleasurable. She likened it all to trying out an exotic desert for the first time. Eating tiramisu, a dark chocolate torte, or fried ice cream were the only experiences she could link the feelings with; expectations were met in ways she couldn’t have foreseen even though there were familiar elements present. It wasn’t a tough decision to come to: she liked it a lot.

The fact that Debbie was sleeping was a little perplexing. Annabelle felt sleepy, but she’d assumed vampires wouldn’t need to or they did so during the day to stay out of the sun, but she hadn’t thought it would be something needed anymore. She felt for her own pulse, but couldn’t find one. Wondering if maybe she was doing it wrong, she checked for Debbie’s as well, pressing her fore and middle finger against the inside of Debbie’s wrist—this too held no pulse. Annabelle realized she was breathing, but Debbie wasn’t. A little flash of fear caused her to give Debbie’s side a light squeeze, to which her girlfriend murmured a little and shifted position. Annabelle decided to try holding her breath to see if breathing was suddenly optional. Ten minutes later, with no discomfort whatsoever, she decided she could probably skip respiration outside of what she needed for speaking.

She didn’t just feel stronger, more aware, and more alive than ever before, she felt happy. The last feeling she attributed more to Debbie than to her recent transformation. Annabelle rested on her side, head propped up in her hand, watching Debbie’s sleeping outline in the bed next to her. She was nude, with the sheet and part of an afghan draped across her in a haphazard manner. There was something erotically artistic about the white skin broken up by the lines of the sheet, the little dots visible through the afghan, and the curve of her hip cresting from between the two. She was also completely natural down there, which was something Annabelle had quite honestly never seen before, but really liked on Debbie. Annabelle had started shaving her legs and trimming her private area at about thirteen and hadn’t ever let anything go wild since. She lifted the blanket over her lower half to inspect herself and wondered if the fashion her pubic hair was in would be the way it always would be. For that matter, she wondered if the hair on her head would stop growing as well.

They didn’t get very far into the whole discussion of catching Debbie up to modern day. Sexual exploration, a few intense climaxes, and then an awkward tapering off into sleep occupied their time, and left none for questions. Now Annabelle was formulating a list of questions of her own and she wondered if Debbie would be any better at answering them than she was likely to be at answering Debbie’s about the modern world. Annabelle knew she had an absentee’s understanding of the world as a malcontent 18-year-old girl. She couldn’t even remember who the mayor was. As with the bedroom stuff, Annabelle shrugged off their similar inexperience and decided they could figure it all out together. She curled against Debbie’s back, nuzzled her face along the nape of her neck, and fell into a dreamless sleep.

Waking up was disorienting. Annabelle could hear someone talking, knew on some level that she was the one being spoken too, but couldn’t understand what was being said to her. All her new senses were trying to wake up at the same time and they collided with one another as if they were the Three Stooges trying to fit through a door all at once.

“You can’t have her!” the voice finally screamed at her.

Annabelle snapped awake. Her creepy detector sharpened as it seemed to be the first stooge to squeeze through, and Annabelle became fully aware of an otherworldly presence in the room. Shadows collected out of the corners into a single dark figure, rushing at her with the repeated phrase. She dove out of bed before the shadow could strike her, nearly knocking over the bedside lamp in the process.

Debbie awoke at the clatter of Annabelle trying to right the lamp. She looked disoriented and concerned, but not alarmed. Annabelle sprung to her feet and scanned the room. The shadows had returned to normal and the half of the bed she’d just vacated was messy, but not unnaturally so.

“What’s wrong?” Debbie asked.

“I think…I think something was here,” Annabelle said, although she wasn’t sure after her mind slowly awoke. “Or I was dreaming.”

“Come back to me,” Debbie said, holding out her hands in the most inviting way Annabelle had ever seen. “You look shaken.”

Annabelle felt shaken. She took the offered embrace, folding herself comfortably back into bed and Debbie’s embrace. Pressing her face against the top of Debbie’s chest, her head just beneath Debbie’s chin, felt protected and she instantly calmed. She hadn’t really stopped to consider it, but she felt safer around Debbie, even before she knew she was a vampire and even after Annabelle became one too—for her, Debbie equaled safety.

“What year is it?” Debbie asked.

“2005,” Annabelle replied.

“Are people living in outer space yet?”

“Sometimes, but not very many and not for very long.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Yeah, it kind of is.”

Annabelle reluctantly returned to sleep in Debbie’s arms. She knew she was a nervous sleeper. She’d slept with a nightlight of some kind all the way into high school. She couldn’t even count how many times in her life she’d mistaken a shadow in the room for a person when coming out of sleep. Still, she’d never had one of these shadows speak to her or attack her, but she’d also never slept as a vampire before. All these concerns evaporated under Debbie’s gentle stroking of her back, and she drifted off again.

4.

Debbie couldn’t return to sleep after Annabelle’s nightmare. She thought of it as a nightmare, although she didn’t really know if it was. She’d gone so long sensing the existence of Maggie that she hardly noticed the faint change in how she existed. Her body was certainly unusable, but apparently she still lingered in other, less specific ways. Debbie had no more explanation than that and she hoped Annabelle wouldn’t ask her.

The love and affection she had for Annabelle contained a narcissistic element to it that surprised Debbie a little. She cared for Annabelle because Annabelle thought she was special and interesting. In a lot of ways, Debbie had to admit it was the same thing that drew her to Grace—she was attracted to people who worshipped her. It was an unflattering realization to come to, but she was completely certain in it. She liked Annabelle, wanted to protect her, adored her flippant nature, and was extremely physically attracted to her, but what really made Annabelle stand out was when she’d tried to dress like Debbie. The unabashed hero worship really turned Debbie on.

The other undeniable similarity between her relationship with Annabelle and the other two relationships she’d been involved in with Grace and Maggie was that Debbie needed Annabelle for survival. Debbie had been tied to Grace for an escape, tied to Maggie in all of the basic needs of existence, and now she was returning to a world that had long since passed her by and Annabelle was to be her only guide. She didn’t want Annabelle to simply be someone she was bound to in survival the way Maggie had been. She wanted to want Annabelle beyond simply needing her.

Even trying to mentally compose a list of things she liked about Annabelle brought her back to her freshly awoken desires. Half a century of sexual repression could do that, Debbie mused with a grin meant only for herself. When Annabelle finally did touch her, finally explored her body, and finally made Debbie feel complete in her transformation, it awakened something insatiable inside her. Her craving for Annabelle rivaled the thirst and the will to survive in intensity. Annabelle could never be close enough, their pleasure never long enough, and their exploration never deep enough—such was the craving created by the first true sexual encounter Debbie ever had. Societal wrong and labeling of the act as a sin paled in comparison to the melding of emotional and physical pleasure she’d experienced when Annabelle’s mouth touched between her legs. She was a seriously smitten-kitten and she didn’t care who knew.

She felt the sun go down with one of the senses she’d never really had a need to name until Annabelle mentioned other senses. She couldn’t even remember that it felt strange the first time it happened, although she assumed it had and that Maggie hadn’t wanted to explain it. Annabelle apparently felt it too as she was awoken by the sensation.

“It’s night,” Annabelle said dreamily.

“It’s dusk, the between time,” Debbie corrected her. “Night has its own feeling when it arrives.”

“You’ve been thinking about me.”

Debbie bit her lip and scrunched her nose—she had and the thoughts were of a very specific kind. “I have.”

Annabelle nuzzled in closer to Debbie. Her hand, which had to that point been resting on the outside of Debbie’s leg, slide around the top of her thigh to press between them instead. “You compared me to a new addiction,” Annabelle said.

Debbie froze, feeling Annabelle’s hands rubbing through the softest of skin between her legs. Thinking of Annabelle for the last hour or so had already made her desire painfully obvious and the caresses only intensified this. “But in a good way,” Debbie purred.

Debbie felt Annabelle’s hand slip away and she ached for its return. She glanced down to Annabelle who was holding up the caressing digits, made glistening and wet by touching her. Annabelle smiled. “I love that I can do this to you,” Annabelle said, marveling at her own handiwork. “Not just the physically able to do it, but that you react to me this way, you know? You’re completely drenched down there and it’s because of me. That’s just…really cool.”

“You really think so?” Debbie asked, actually having been a little embarrassed by it to that point.

“Are you kidding me? I didn’t know someone could ever be that turned on by me, let alone someone like you. Plus…” Annabelle placed the wet digits in her mouth and sucked them clean. “…I’m addicted to you too.” As if to prove her addiction, Annabelle made her way down Debbie’s body, eager to taste more of what had clung to her fingers.

Debbie lost herself to the moment, letting Annabelle move her as needed so long as the tongue bath continued. Starting on her side was apparently difficult, and so Annabelle turned her to her back. As this too became too complex an angle for Annabelle’s lapping, she lifted Debbie’s legs and hips off the bed entirely, letting Debbie’s legs dangle over her shoulders. With just the tops of her shoulders and head still resting on the bed, Debbie thought she was in heaven. She arched her back, placed her hands on the bed and lifted the rest of her up to match, surprised to find Annabelle’s strength was matched by her own; they were both nearly tireless in suspending Debbie at a near flat angle off the bed. Debbie hadn’t known anything like it before in her life. The more pleasure she received, the more often she came, which was what Annabelle had called it, the more she wanted until it was an endless snake eating its own tail, looping back and increasing over and over. Finally, when she thought she was reaching the absolute pinnacle of what she could take, she screamed out a profession of love for Annabelle connected to everything she was feeling.

This satisfied them both, but somewhere, as if dwelling in the ether surrounding the forest she’d lived in for so long, she felt Maggie’s presence and knew she’d heard. Debbie didn’t want to care, but the distinct impression she received from the angry presence was that of jealousy and rage. As Annabelle lowered her back to the bed, Debbie felt so heavenly she couldn’t be bothered to care what Maggie’s lingering presence thought. She glanced down to Annabelle still kneeling between her legs. Aside from the glistening spread across most of Annabelle’s lower face, there was something else newly alluring about her.

“You’re the absolute living ends, Anna-Bee,” Debbie said, “and for some reason, you’re even prettier now than when you started.”

Annabelle took the compliment in stride, as her focus was elsewhere. “Your hair,” she said, reaching down to touch a lock of Debbie’s hair splayed across the pillows, “it grew.”

Debbie sat up and slid her hands along through her hair to find Annabelle was unmistakably right. Her hair not only had grown well past her shoulders where it formerly sat for memorable past, it was thicker and heavier than before as well. Her hair had become so thick, so full, so heavy that she didn’t think she could put a bump and a flip in it with all the hairspray in the world, and the transformation had apparently taken place in a matter of a dozen or so minutes.

“What do you suppose that means?” Debbie asked.

Annabelle shrugged and shook her head. “It hasn’t done that before?”

Debbie flopped back into the pillows with a giggle. “Why would it? I’ve never done that before.” Annabelle rested her head on Debbie’s stomach, to which Debbie’s hands responded by stroking through Annabelle’s hair. “I meant it when I said I love you,” Debbie said, butterflies rising her stomach beneath Annabelle’s head.

“You screamed it, baby,” Annabelle said, “and I…I feel the same way.”

Debbie shrugged off Annabelle’s reluctance to say the actual words. They were just words at the moment and she was certain a time would come when they would be easier to say. Phil had said them a dozen times, but Debbie didn’t believe the words he said and they didn’t make her care any more for the person who had spoken them. Maggie had intimated the words on a dozen occasions, but always fell short of speaking them explicitly, and Debbie was quite sure Maggie loved her although the feeling was never returned. It was about time Debbie was the one to say them, and she’d more than earned the lukewarm response through all her previous deflecting in the past when others had said them to her. She was certain Annabelle would come around, and even if she didn’t, reciprocity wasn’t required for the intensity of her feelings to remain.

“I’m feeling something like hungry,” Annabelle said, “but I can’t think of what for.”

“We should go hunting,” Debbie replied. “I’ll show you how.”

5.

Annabelle thrilled at the sensation of running through the woods at night without fear. It was as though she were a child again, running without concern for tiring or appearances. She could feel the deer, smell its fear, and hear its heart thundering in its chest. Additionally, she knew where Debbie was both by their connection and the supernatural sense. Annabelle thought she might be able to catch the deer, but that wasn’t the plan. Debbie would intercept it when it tired on the uphill side of a low rise Annabelle was shepherding the large buck toward.

Annabelle was close behind the deer, now close enough to actually see it through the pitch black trees and underbrush. Suddenly Debbie burst from the woods, snatched up the deer by its antlers, and snapped its neck with a quick twist of her wrist. Annabelle had seen her father do the same thing when duck hunting, but it was remarkably smoother and easier seeing Debbie perform the act on a much larger animal.

Debbie turned the animal over, holding it up by one of its hind legs, and motioned Annabelle over. Part of Annabelle knew implicitly what came next although the human remnants in her head rejected the act as repulsive. She knelt before Debbie and the deer, took the animal’s neck in her hands and bit down hard. She was rewarded with a rush of blood drawn down to her mouth by gravity, still warm and gamy as it poured into her mouth. The sensation of feeding was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. She wasn’t full or satisfied in the way food had done for her in the past, and when she was finished, she didn’t feel over stuffed, simply done. Annabelle took the other leg of the animal from Debbie and held it up for her to take her share.

Annabelle watched Debbie feed with a remarkable affection rising in her. As strange as the entire evening should have been, it felt natural and right. Hunting felt good, empowering, as though it were a bonding experience between them—the food they shared was equally earned. When Debbie was done, Annabelle laid the deer down on the forest floor to study it a moment suddenly lifeless and growing colder by the moment.

“Vampires can’t get fat,” Annabelle said. “That’s why I couldn’t drink anymore—there’s no way to metabolize it into fat.”

Debbie stared at her without understanding.

“What did they teach you in health classes in the 50s?” Annabelle asked.

“Nothing of value, apparently,” Debbie said. “I was smart though. I got good grades.”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Annabelle said. “I can tell you’re smart—very smart and a quick learner.” They stood in silence for a time, inches apart, simply enjoying the proximity. “So, what do we do with the leftovers?” Annabelle finally broke the silence.

“We leave it for them.” Debbie nodded to the right.

Annabelle glanced over and for the first time she both saw and felt the otherworldly presence of several tiny, darkened figures, skittering between the trees whenever she tried to look directly at them. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. “What are they?”

“Maggie called them the orphans—the lingering angry spirits of the children who died in the woods,” Debbie said. “She said some of them were here before Europeans came, but I don’t know how she would have known that. They’ll take care of the deer when we leave.”

“Can we see them because they’re letting us see them or because we’re vampires?” Annabelle asked, the shivers moving from her neck down her arms as she watched the childlike shadows dance between the trees.

“I don’t know,” Debbie said. “But I know they’re afraid of what we are. I think what killed them was like us.”

“It wasn’t Maggie then?”

“No. She killed people, but never children.”

The afterglow from the hunt was quickly fading and Annabelle suddenly wished to be out of the woods again. She wondered if Vigil’s Wood was once large enough to dilute the angry spirits still inhabiting it and if its dwindling size was concentrating so much supernatural energy to an increasingly small acreage. “Can we please go?” Annabelle asked.

Debbie took her hand and led her from the woods at a brisk walk along paths she’d learned like a second nature. Annabelle chanced a few glances back over her shoulder to see the shades of children descend on the fallen deer, washing it over in darkness.

6.

Levity returned to the walk once they were clear of the woods. They strolled through the field across from the Baskin Robbins, hand in hand, giggling at newly shared jokes about recently discovered intimacies between them. When Annabelle became aware of where they were, her focus shifted to the darkened front of the ice cream shop and she almost subconsciously began guiding their path toward it.

“I wonder if I’ll be able to keep my job,” Annabelle mused. “I wonder if I’ll even need a job anymore.”

“Do you like working?” Debbie asked, resting her head on Annabelle’s shoulder.

“It’s fine,” Annabelle said. “It felt small before though and now it feels…unimportant.”

“We’re going to need to do some serious figuring things out soon,” Debbie said, “but we don’t have to plan it all tonight.”

They shared a brief kiss before turning their backs on the ice cream shop. They turned the corner to head home, walking with their backs to the high school when Annabelle felt an increasingly familiar creeping sensation similar to the one she’d felt when the orphans were watching her. She glanced back over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of an ethereal form darting between the houses and trees of the darkened neighborhood behind them. It was too big to be an orphan and didn’t move with the same deliberate gate. The figure was blinking in and out of existence, flashing as though part of a very slow moving strobe as it trailed behind them in something of a haphazard path.

Debbie caught on Annabelle’s unease, hugging closer to her side. “It’s Maggie,” Debbie whispered.

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t know, but I can feel her. Let’s hurry.”

They picked up the pace, rounding the last corner to lead down Annabelle’s street. They both chanced one last glance over their shoulders to see how much space they might have created with an unspoken understanding they would break into a sprint after. The flashing apparition wasn’t behind them anymore. When they turned their attention ahead, they nearly ran into the rushing specter that had grown not only in intensity, but also in solidity. The ethereal Maggie rushed at them with only the most trivial trappings of humanity left in her gruesome visage. She didn’t even manage words this time as her mouth was little more than a jagged maw of broken, angry teeth. Instead, she shrieked like a banshee as she descended on them.

Debbie wrapped herself around Annabelle, shielding her from the attacking spirit with her body. Annabelle struggled in her embrace, partially wishing to free herself for a fight or flight response, and partially because she had wanted to shield Debbie, but had reacted far too slowly. But the attack never landed. Slowly their bracing eased and they broke apart to find the street empty.

“This is going to get old,” Annabelle murmured.

“I think it’s me,” Debbie said, seemingly on the verge of tears. “She’s after me and I’m endangering you by even being around you. We have to…”

“We have to stay together,” Annabelle cut her off. “If you think I’m going to go through this alone, think again. I need you.”

“Need me?” Debbie’s eyes, already threatening with tears, sought out Annabelle’s to search them for truth.

“It scares me how much I need you,” Annabelle said. “I need you so much I don’t even have anything to compare the need to.”

“I need you too.” Debbie’s eyes finally spilled the tears down her cheeks in winding streams. “I thought…I don’t know what. But what do we do about her?”

“We need to know who she was,” Annabelle said. “We need to know why Vigil’s Woods is the way it is.”

They resumed their walk, a little more secure in one another’s company, although they both kept darting glances behind them and to the darkened front yards to either side as they walked. Annabelle gave Debbie’s hand a reassuring squeeze when they finally reached the driveway and Debbie responded with a squeeze of her own that had a surprisingly soothing effect. Annabelle didn’t know what she would do without Debbie, but she didn’t think she could survive it.

7.

They awoke together, tangled in bedding and each other’s limbs. Annabelle traced her fingertips idly along Debbie’s stomach, waiting for her to respond, which she finally did in the form of a squirmy giggle. They parted briefly to their respective sides of the double bed to stare up at the ceiling.

“You don’t have breakfast or dinner with your family?” Debbie asked.

“On Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Annabelle replied. “Otherwise we’re all usually busy.”

“So they might not notice something strange is going on with you…?”

“…ever, maybe.”

“That seems sad.”

Annabelle turned on her side to look at Debbie. “What about your family?”

“I don’t know,” Debbie said. “I don’t really want to know.”

Annabelle decided to leave the topic alone. She didn’t like talking about her family and it certainly seemed like Debbie didn’t either. The vast difference between their family values might come up later, but she decided that would be a problem for her future self to deal with.

They got dressed in heavy clothes, scarves for their heads, turtlenecks, and the largest sunglasses Annabelle had; with their hair rearranged to cover as much of their faces as possible, they stepped out into the sunlight of early afternoon. Annabelle immediately felt like she had a migraine, menstrual cramps, and shin splints all over her body. The sensation of having several new senses and heightened existing senses vanished and the entire world became a whitewashed world of pain coming down every receptor.

“Fuck me,” Annabelle muttered as she leaned against the railing for the staircase up to her apartment. “It’s like a ten ton hangover. Are you sure this isn’t doing any permanent damage?”

Debbie seemed equally dazed and suffering, but also a little more used to the idea. “Not as sure as I used to be,” Debbie muttered. “Can you see me? Do I look like a monster?”

Annabelle struggled to pull her eyes open, but even then all she could see was a hazy version of the world as though she were looking at everything through a frosted pane of glass. She had a vague idea of where Debbie was, but couldn’t be sure of anything beyond her outline being the same. “I can’t see anything,” Annabelle complained. “How the hell are we going to get to the library like this?” Even talking started to hurt. When she opened her mouth, sunlight flooded in and it felt like she suddenly had dozens of cavities on every surface of every tooth and the ache of repeated tongue bitings.

Debbie stepped back into the bedroom, into the blessed protection of the darkness, but held out her hand to block Annabelle from coming in when she tried to follow. “Let my eyes clear and I’ll tell you if you look different.”

“Okay, but hurry,” Annabelle said. She thought about being allowed in while they waited for Debbie to recover, but she wasn’t sure she would have the nerve to step back out into the light if she received even a brief reprieve.

Debbie’s recovery was swift. She took her time inspect Annabelle’s face and hands in the light, but didn’t seem to note any significant differences. “I don’t understand,” Debbie said. “You look the same—pale, but not like a monster.”

“Yippy-fucking-skippy—Maggie was wrong.” Annabelle pushed her way past Debbie into the haven of the room and immediately felt relief. She leaned against the wall, breathing through her mouth as every breath seemed to carry away some of the pain from her teeth and tongue. “We have to figure out something else. I don’t think I can do that again.”

“You should look at me though,” Debbie said, taking a step toward the doorway.

Annabelle’s hand shot out, catching Debbie’s wrist, preventing her from stepping back out into the light. “I don’t want to,” Annabelle said. She was partly concerned for Debbie’s wellbeing, but she also wondered if she could stand seeing Debbie with the death mask Maggie wore. “Who cares, really? We’re not going to be going outside again anyway.”

“You’re afraid I’m a monster,” Debbie murmured.

“If you are, then I am too, and it doesn’t matter.”

Debbie allowed herself to be pulled all the way back into the room, flicking the door closed behind her. She wrapped herself into Annabelle’s arms. The extra padding of their heavy sweaters and jackets numbed the hug. Annabelle came to the realization that clothing muted hugs were fine for family and friends, but she much preferred naked hugs when it came to Debbie.

“I’m going to check the sunset time with the library’s closing hours to see if there’s any overlap,” Annabelle said. They broke the hug and she made her way to the computer.

Debbie began peeling away the carefully arranged clothes that had failed so spectacularly at shielding them from the sun. When she removed her scarf, her hair felt longer and heavier than it had even the day before. She ran several thick strands through her fingers to find them strong and healthy.

“So it looks like we’ll have a little over an hour tonight.” Annabelle looked back to Debbie to show her the computer screen, but stopped when she saw her. Debbie, in a state of partial dress, long, strawberry blond hair apparently gaining in volume and glory by the second, looked a little like a modern Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, but with unbuttoned jeans too tight through the hips because apparently Debbie’s dimensions were so 50s luscious that Annabelle’s modern waistline jeans couldn’t fully button over the glory of Debbie’s curves. Annabelle thought it was probably the hottest thing she’d ever seen. “You don’t look like a monster,” Debbie said. “You look like a goddess.” She quickly typed in the title of Botticelli’s painting on her search bar, and popped up the picture in question for Debbie to see.

Debbie glanced to the screen and smiled. “That is amazing. You can just think of something and see it.”

“There’s typing involved too, but sure, I suppose it is pretty amazing,” Annabelle said. She’d grown up with the internet—it had never occurred to her that it was amazing. She had a sneaking suspicion that the ancient town records they needed at the library would probably require Debbie’s skill set in researching though since Annabelle couldn’t say for sure if she even remembered how to use the Dewey Decimal System from the lone field trip to the library in third grade which was the one and only time anyone even tried to explain it to her.

Debbie sat on the edge of the bed with her back to Annabelle. She glanced over her shoulder, her face partially obscured by her lustrous mane of hair. Annabelle caught on the only movement in the room—Debbie’s right hand caressing back and forth along the bedspread beside her leg.

“Are you…?” Annabelle asked.

“Yes, again, is that weird?”

Annabelle shrugged. “Who knows?” She stood from the computer chair and slipped her turtleneck sweater off over her head and did her best seductive saunter around the foot of the bed to stand in front of Debbie. “But if it is, we’re both weird.” Annabelle leaned down to kiss Debbie, which only fueled the crazed fire inside her that craved everything about Debbie. Every second spent not touching her was an eternity, every scrap of clothing separating their skin was a wall too thick, and the more Annabelle got, the more she wanted. She couldn’t say for sure if what she felt was love, as it felt so much like going insane, but it frightened and thrilled her all at once which was a vast departure from the crushing boredom of her life since summer.

8.

They walked to the library after sundown that night despite the offer of a ride from Annabelle’s mother. Debbie wanted to take the ride, and told Annabelle along the way that in no uncertain terms, she was going to get to know Annabelle’s mother. Please don’t, was Annabelle’s feeble response.

The records wing, and the one they would have to research within to find anything old enough to contain information about Maggie, had been moved a dozen times until it finally occupied an out of the way room in the original housing of the library, long since relegated to unimportance by a handful of new additions to the building. They stopped in their tracks as they wandered down the matured hallways smelling strongly of old paper and aging municipal building. The archway above the doors, dingy as it was, clearly read “Deborah Poole Memorial Reading Room.”

“What the fuck?” Annabelle asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Debbie replied.

A plaque of faded bronze on the wall held an answer, albeit a vague one:

In memoriam of Deborah Poole

Our beloved Harvest Festival Princess, cheerleader, and true daughter of Vermont, taken before her time, but never to be forgotten.

May 1937 to August 1955

Debbie traced her fingers along the tarnished old plaque and snort laughed her disdain. “Funny how I was forgotten,” she said.

“Say what you want, but they wouldn’t do something like this if I died,” Annabelle said and suddenly burst out into a strange giggle. “Never mind, I did die and nobody did shit.” Annabelle tugged at Debbie’s shirt to draw her attention to another plaque on the opposite side of the hallway mirroring the first, but this one without the old black and white photo of Debbie. “Do you recognize any of the names?” Annabelle asked, indicating that the second plaque was a list of donators who made the whole thing possible.

Debbie scanned the list, finding her parents of course, many of her former friends, Phil’s parents, even Pastor Gunderson, and at the end, as if added reluctantly, was Grace Corker. Debbie touched the name with reverent fingers and smiled. “Her,” she said. “She was my first real love.”

A wicked, barbed jealousy snaked its way up Annabelle’s spine. It was a ridiculous emotional response to someone who would either be well into their seventies or dead by that point. She didn’t suppose it was reasonable to assume Debbie was like her, without any real relationship history to tell. Annabelle mustered up every scrap of maturity she could find and swallowed the jealousy like a bitter little pill.

“What happened to her?” Annabelle asked.

“She died…no, she didn’t die, Maggie killed her,” Debbie said. The words reopened a wound she’d thought long since healed. It had been decades since she’d said the words aloud despite having thought them countless times. “Maggie killed her,” she said again just to feel the cold edge of her hatred grow keener with the repetition. The sweet part of her, the part cherished in memoriam by the other plaque across the hall, that might have found a shred of pity for Maggie in death, couldn’t survive the sharp words. Debbie had killed Maggie by accident and she’d done so in protection of Annabelle, but she’d wished for so long that she could do it in vengeance of Grace.

“I’m so sorry,” Annabelle murmured. Her jealousy crumbled and faded into nothingness. As tragic ends for first loves went, the rift that separated Grace and Debbie was vast and majestic leaving Annabelle to love them both as one might love Tristan and Isolde.

“I still can’t do it.” Debbie turned with fresh icy tears painting her cheeks. “I can’t separate the parts of her that I hate from the parts I am eternally grateful to. If I’d never met her, I still wouldn’t have had Grace.” Debbie tried to wipe away the tears with the back of her hand but fresh ones immediately took their place. “I didn’t even have to kill Maggie. I could have let Grace’s father do it. But even then, even if I let her die, I might never have met you since you were who she wanted to replace her. She was completely insane by that point, but still, the motivation for me to come see you came from her.”

“Maybe it’s okay that she’s both,” Annabelle offered, gently rubbing her hands up and down the outsides of Debbie’s arms. “You can hate someone for some of the things they do and be grateful to them for others, can’t you?”

“I guess we’ll see,” Debbie said. “What happened to your first love? I’m sure it’s not the crazy jazz mine was.”

“Actually, there are some similarities,” Annabelle said with a wry smirk. “You’re my first love, but things seem to be going pretty well so far.”

Debbie laughed despite the lingering remnants of her crying. She leaned in and kissed Annabelle gently with her tears flavoring the kiss with a salty edge. They walked into Debbie’s reading room to begin their search with what little time remained before closing.

9.

The week wore on with little headway being made in discovering anything new about Maggie or the woods. The ghostly sightings of Maggie’s angry spirit within the town stopped being relegated to just Annabelle and Debbie as more and more anecdotes began surfacing throughout the town.

The research was further slowed by Annabelle’s new work schedule. She faked a note from a doctor, which Debbie thought was downright amazing, by lifting a clinic’s letterhead from their website and then writing the note with her left hand. It stated that Annabelle suffered from solar urticaria and could not work during daylight hours. Debbie asked how Annabelle even knew about the disease to which she replied, “I searched for ‘sunlight allergy’ on WebMD and picked the worst sounding one.” The new work schedule, as provided by the American’s With Disabilities Act, again something that amazed Debbie but was a simple Google search for Annabelle, meant they would spend half their evenings in Baskin Robbins, closing the store after hours.

They’d fallen into such a domestic routine, that Annabelle almost didn’t notice how much time Debbie was spending with her mother. The two were getting along famously as Debbie was more than happy to help with housework that Annabelle always flatly refused to do, and Debbie seemed perfectly happy to sit for hours on end simply listening to gossip—Annabelle’s mother’s favorite topic. Annabelle wanted to object in her petulant teenage way, but she saw how happy it made both Debbie and her mother and decided to leave it alone.

The week before Thanksgiving, they were back in the library on Annabelle’s night off. They were in a silly mood, canoodling a little in the empty hallway, passing their increasingly obscure inside jokes back and forth as they walked. Annabelle kissed two fingertips and placed them to the lips of Debbie’s old picture as they strolled by the memorial into the Deborah Poole Reading Room.

“You were a hottie then and a hottie now,” Annabelle said with a giggle.

Someone behind them dropped a stack of books on the floor with a slap and a clatter. Annabelle and Debbie both snapped their heads around at once to find they weren’t alone in the hallway.

“Hey, Ms. Jensen,” Annabelle said. “Are you okay?”

“Um…fine,” Ms. Jensen said, quickly bending down to pick up her dropped books.

Annabelle and Debbie rushed over to help her. The entire time, when Ms. Jensen should have been focusing on the stack of books, she was watching Debbie with unblinking eyes.

“Ms. Jensen is my old PE teacher,” Annabelle explained to Debbie.

“And who is your friend?” Ms. Jensen asked.

“She’s my girlfriend Debbie, from...” Annabelle said.

“New Haven,” Debbie offered.

“Yep, New Haven. We met on the internet…we’re dating now…living together even,” Annabelle said, not really sure why she felt so nervous telling all of that to Ms. Jensen. She was proud of dating Debbie and she had a sneaking suspicion Ms. Jensen’s tastes angled the same direction.

“Debbie…what?” Ms. Jensen asked.

It occurred to Annabelle a few moments too late that she probably shouldn’t have used Debbie’s real name, especially in light of the fact that they were holding their discussion beneath the Deborah Poole Memorial Reading Room arch with a picture of Debbie not five feet to their left. “Just Debbie,” Annabelle said quickly. “You know, like Nelly, or Cher, or…Jesus?”

“Ah, I see, well, it’s a pleasure to meet you Just Debbie,” Ms. Jensen said. “What brings you two to the archive section?”

“We’re researching the town history for college application essays,” Debbie offered without missing a beat.

Annabelle was a little surprised at the ease of response. She was so flummoxed when lying most of the time that polished subterfuge tended to amaze her. “Yep, um…what brings you down here?” Annabelle asked.

“My sister Ruth is the research librarian,” Ms. Jensen explained.

Annabelle couldn’t reconcile the two women as related. Mrs. Daggett was a prematurely old woman with a permanent scowl and frumpy clothes while Ms. Jensen was tall, athletic, aging beautifully, and even effervescent at times. “For real? Mrs. Daggett?” Annabelle asked bluntly.

“Daggett is her married name,” Ms. Jensen explained. “I’ll talk to her for you if you’d like. See if I can’t get her to help you a little or at least give you some more time with your research.”

“We would appreciate that so much,” Debbie said sweetly. “Thank you.”

Ms. Jensen walked ahead of them, her armful of books recollected. Annabelle and Debbie fell in step behind her, linking arms as they walked. Something about the lovely woman in the jeans and sweatshirt with short fire-red hair seemed strangely familiar to Debbie although she couldn’t put her finger on why.

10.

With the added time and help from the remarkably adept historian Ruth Daggett, information they hadn’t found or had missed entirely began to come to light. Before the weekend, they had a pile of journals, old newspapers, and town records collected on a library cart that Mrs. Daggett set aside for them. More surprisingly, the research librarian began adding her own information to the cart when Debbie and Annabelle weren’t even there. They would show up every few evenings to discover Mrs. Daggett had found and included new information pertinent to their search, which was obviously not about college application essays.

On the Monday night before Thanksgiving, Mrs. Daggett came over to their alcove with a strange old book in hand. She wordlessly set it on the table between Annabelle and Debbie and walked away.

With reverent, delicate fingers, they both opened the book, one to each side, and found inside Maggie’s old journal.

Part 8: The Twisted Root

Autumn 1849 – Margaret

1.

Margaret Mayhew, daughter of Vigil’s Rest’s only blacksmith, awoke before the sunrise whenever she could. It was a habit her mother had instilled in her before she’d died of smallpox, although the reason changed when her mother died. She’d formerly awoken with her mother to start a cooking fire in the stove, stoke the fireplace, and begin preparing breakfast, but now she awoke before her father and brother because this was the only time of day her father had the energy to crawl into her bed. If she was not in her bed, he would simply have to go to work.

A daughter’s duty is what the men of Vigil’s Rest called her work. Margaret should have been long married by age eighteen, but her eighteenth birthday had come and gone and she was still acting as housewife to her widower father and mother to her younger brother. The few suitable men in town who had shown interest in her recoiled when they discovered they would be stealing the female lifeblood of the only blacksmith’s household. Father Virgil, the town’s puritan minister and devoted Calvinist, said it was the godliest thing Margaret could do to sacrifice her future happiness for her father and brother’s continued wellbeing, to say nothing of how it helped the town for their blacksmith to remain happy and productive.

Margaret could accept the duties of cooking, cleaning, and keeping a home for her father and brother. She didn’t even mind her chance at being married slipping away as she never really had much interest in boys or the men they grew up to be. But she couldn’t abide warming her father’s bed or the harsh slaps she received whenever she told him his actions were against God’s law. This was why she awoke before dawn and why she vacated the cabin attached to the blacksmith’s forge before her father or brother awoke.

The rustic little village was quiet as she slipped through the streets in her warmest shawl. The only other people stirring were the other women who were busy about starting their days as well. Margaret passed her oldest friend’s home on her way to the woods. Sarah had married in the summer two years prior. She had already born one child for her husband, a woodsman, and was well on her way to a second. Sarah’s first baby, a boy, had died of a fever earlier that autumn, and Sarah was still in mourning. Margaret resolved to stop by on her way back to perhaps share a few apples she planned on picking. Sarah was once a lively little sprite of a girl, but now, having lost her looks to two hard pregnancies and the spark in her eyes to the death of one of her children, she was gaining the hard, Protestant edge of most of the other women in the town. Margaret wondered how long it would be before she shared that fate.

Margaret loved the forest. The quiet rustle of life and nature around her calmed her from the grime and toil of the town. She’d brought a sack with her to pick apples from a few of the trees that had escaped the old orchards to grow wild within the woods, but she would wait until after she’d visited Esther for that chore. The path out to the old Hessian homestead wasn’t well-trodden and wound its way through the woods like a gnarled root with plenty of offshoots and twists to prevent easy passage unless a person knew which way to go when it forked. Margaret was such a person as she’d walked the path many times.

The stone cabin Esther lived in on a low rise in the oldest heart of the forest had no door but thatching, no chimney as the only fire pit was on the back with a simple hole letting out the smoke, and looked more like a carefully stacked pile of rocks than any true cabin. Esther said it was built by her husband’s own two hands when he was a young man. Esther didn’t like talking much about her dead husband, only to say he was a Hessian, one of the mercenaries captured by Washington during the War of Independence. Margaret counted the years on this and surmised Esther must be more than eighty for this to be true. The withered, hunched old woman who dressed in piles of rags tied loosely around her frail form certainly looked like she could be that old. The oldest man in town, Grandfather Jeremiah, was only sixty-two and in increasingly poor health. When Margaret brought this fact to Esther, her old friend laughed in a wheezy, racked way and said, “I’m older than eighty but not quite a hundred. Tell me when this Grandfather Jeremiah can say the same.”

Margaret walked through the tiny fields of corn that grew tall to either side of the path leading up to the stone cabin. The stalks were left as they stood, browned and tan as they had already been plucked clean of their ears and were left to dry with the coming winter. Esther was in front of her cabin, hauling a bucket of water over from the well to pour into the cooking pot set on the stone fire ring she used for laundry and cooking.

“Fair morning to you, Miss Mayhew,” Esther said upon Margaret’s approach.

“To you as well,” Margaret replied.

They had their routine, one of quiet industriousness, where Margaret would sit and make cornhusk dolls as Esther had taught her, stacking them neatly in a basket to sell them in town upon her return, while Esther cooked breakfast by pouring cornmeal mixed with water on heated stones to create Johnny cakes. That morning, while they waited for the cakes to cook, Esther took her usual seat across the basket of dried cornhusks from Margaret and began bending sticks into odd shapes, tying them into place with straps of dried animal sinew. She added feathers, tiny rodent skulls, and sprigs of plants here and there as decoration on the webbed hoops and filled in crosses.

“I don’t think I could sell those,” Margaret said, noting how gruesome most of items looked when Esther was done.

“They’re not for selling,” Esther replied, her old, gnarled hands never leaving their work. “I want you to watch what I do, learn to make them yourself, and then hang them back along the trail when you leave and maybe down by the creek crossing away from the road.”

“Why?”

“Those accursed urchins have been stealing my corn again,” Esther replied cryptically.

Margaret took the answer as if she knew what it meant. Their food was ready and the work of creating dolls nearly done. They ate in silence as always, finished their dual tasks after, and Esther ushered Margaret on her way with a repeating of the instructions: hang them along the way, but out of sight from the trail.

2.

Margaret did as she was told, walking back along the trail with the basket of cornhusk dolls to sell on one arm and a basket of what Esther had called dream catchers, god’s eyes, and wind chimes in the other. She hung them as she was told, cleverly disguising them among the bare branches of oaks or the thick greenery of the fir trees. It slowed her return to town, but gave her a longer reprieve in the woods she loved.

The sun was nearly at mid height when she neared town again, too late for her to pick apples, and so she decided to stop off at Sarah’s to gift her one of the dolls. Perhaps she would have a girl this time. Margaret stopped outside the decrepit cabin that was the woodsman’s home before he’d married Sarah and hadn’t improved much after despite his promises to build her a grand home with logs he cut himself. There was shouting inside, and rattling of metal items against wooden furniture. Margaret secreted herself away along the side of the cabin where firewood was stacked beneath a crumbling awning with a thatched roof. She could hear Sarah’s husband inside, hollering at her about the state of the cabin, about her fading looks, and her wasteful ways. Margaret heard him strike her, not the open palmed slaps Margaret’s fathered delivered on her, but a closed fist—Sarah’s husband always struck her with a closed hand.

Margaret waited awhile, long until after the sounds of shouting died down. Sarah’s husband emerged from the cabin shortly after, took up his ax, and tromped down the road with an angry slope to his shoulders. Her avoidance of marriage seemed more and more like a blessing whenever she visited Sarah. Margaret emerged from her hiding spot when she was certain Sarah’s husband would not return, and knocked on the cabin door.

Sarah’s enshrouded face peeked through the front window to see who it was, and the door opened shortly after. Margaret was let in without a word. She righted an overturned wooden stool with three legs, and guided her increasingly pregnant friend to sit upon it while she cleaned up. The first few times Margaret had done such cleaning for her friend there had been pottery, glass, and ceramic shards in the mix, but more and more, Sarah’s husband was running out of breakables to shatter. The metal cookware and wooden furniture had started showing signs of ruin from the abuse, but were far more resistant to his rages. It didn’t take long for Margaret to clean up the mess as it was a small cabin and the items to hurl around were becoming fewer and fewer.

Sarah investigated the basket of cornhusk dolls and removed one of the best Margaret had made to inspect it closer. Margaret smiled to her friend with the swollen eye and bleeding nose. She couldn’t clean Sarah up. She wanted to, wanted to help her feel better, but the one time she’d tried, Sarah had chased her out of the house.

“You should keep that one,” Margaret said. “You might have a girl who would like it.”

Sarah hurled the doll back into the basket. “Drown me and the girl if I’m unfortunate enough to have a daughter,” Sarah said. “Jacob wants another son or nothing.”

There were kind platitudes Margaret knew she was supposed to offer about the joys of having a daughter and the goodness of husbands to know what is best, but she didn’t believe any of it and she knew she couldn’t make Sarah believe any of it, not with her nose bleeding the way it was. Margaret knelt before Sarah and smiled up into her marred face. She plucked the doll Sarah had been admiring from the basket and offered it to her again.

“Then you should keep it for yourself,” she said. “Hide it away so he can’t ruin it the way he does with pretty things.”

Sarah took the offered doll, clutched it to her chest as precious, and finally smiled in return to Margaret. “You’re a dear friend,” she said.

Margaret held her hand for a moment while Sarah cradled the little cornhusk doll. When the tremble finally faded from Sarah’s pudgy hand clenched tightly in Margaret’s slender digits, they took a moment to pray together. It was the same prayer they always uttered before parting ways. They asked that Margaret’s mother be commended to heaven and that Sarah’s husband be touched by the hand of God so he might be a kinder man.

Margaret left things with Sarah as well-off as she could, waving to her through the cabin window before departing. As many times as they’d prayed together without anything ever changing, she doubted God was listening.

3.

Margaret always had to work twice as hard through the afternoon and evening to finish all her housework and chores when she went out to see Esther or stopped by to see Sarah and she’d done both that day. She never minded the intensity of the work after though and her father was always placated in her absence when she gave him half the money she’d earned selling the cornhusk dolls. She usually told him it was the full amount even though she set aside the other half to buy items Esther needed but would never ask for.

The billow of her father’s forge was putting out great puffs of smoke and steam on the street side of their house when Margaret approached. The trail of smoke vanished up into the haze of the town’s wood smoke, which in turn faded against the overcast autumn sky. Margaret would no doubt have cleaning to do around the house, an angry mess left over from her father and brother having to fend for themselves at breakfast. She would need to make sure the house was clean and orderly before she could head into town to sell the dolls in case she returned after her father was done with his work.

She set the basket of dolls on the table and removed her shawl to hang it on the peg nearest the door. The sound of her father’s hammer clanging against steel horseshoes and the iron anvil resounded through the cabin. She’d grown accustomed to the repetitive sound and the acrid scents that always permeated the wall shared with the smithy until she couldn’t imagine the house without them.

She nearly leapt out of her skin with fright when her brother Ezekiel emerged from the back bedroom. His sandy blond hair was a mess while his overalls were entirely too clean to have been to work. He was only thirteen, and small for his age, but he worked hard at a few odd jobs on nearby pig farms. He was a sweet boy with a soft temperament and a way with animals making him a poor choice to apprentice as a blacksmith under their father.

“What are you doing home in such a tidy state?” Margaret asked as she began stoking up the fire in the stove to boil water over.

“Mr. Derby is slaughtering today,” Ezekiel explained. “He knows I don’t like hearing the pigs screaming, so he sent me home.”

The sweetness of her little brother struck her. He was a tender boy growing into a fine young man. Whatever hardness their father had tried to instill in him simply hadn’t taken. They were the only two children of seven to survive, but Margaret thought they had done well as a family to produce such a boy.

“Someday you might have the money to make a farm of your own,” Margaret said. “I’ve seen how you save your earnings. What will you do when it is your job to slaughter the animals?”

“Oh, I don’t want a farm,” Ezekiel replied in his quiet way. “I want a livery where I can take care of horses all day and sleep in the hayloft above them.”

“That sounds like a fine plan if I ever heard one.” Margaret busied herself tidying up the kitchen while she talked. The mess was not as bad as other days, which she suspected meant Ezekiel hadn’t eaten for fear of creating extra work for his sister. “Are you hungry? I could make you something before I go out again.”

“Mrs. Derby fed me up fine before they sent me home,” Ezekiel replied.

There was something odd in the way her brother was talking and standing. He was smiling shyly, which was becoming off-putting and he was standing as though he’d recently removed a cap to hide it behind his back. Margaret gave him a puzzled look and quirked an eyebrow.

“You look about ready to burst with a secret,” Margaret said.

“My saved money…we could take it and go…I know what has been going on in the mornings and I’m wanting to rescue you from it,” Ezekiel said quickly, his words tumbling out of him in a jumbled mess as though he knew what he wanted to say, but couldn’t get the words to come out in an orderly stream. “I love you…”

“I love you too, Ezekiel, but I’m not sure what you’re…” and this was all Margaret managed before her sweet little brother grasped her by the arms and forcibly kissed her.

She struggled at his embrace, surprised to find the wiry boy was a good deal stronger than her. His insistent and unpracticed advances were remarkably difficult to shrug off, and she might not have managed if her father hadn’t stormed into the house at that exact moment. She hadn’t noticed that the clanging of the hammer had stopped and neither had her brother apparently. Her father yanked away Ezekiel by a handful of his hair and hurled him violently into the table and chairs.

Margaret screamed and moved to aid her brother, but her father struck her hard across the face with an open hand, dropping her to the floor with the entire left side of her face stinging and her left ear ringing. From her vantage point sprawled partially on her side, she could see Ezekiel was hurt, but not badly. He was faking to some degree, crawling away from his father to use the table as an obstacle until he could regain himself.

“Vile whore,” Margaret’s father yelled down at her, accompanying the insult with a healthy spray of spittle. “How dare you…” But he didn’t seem to know how to finish the thought without implicating himself in the same sin he was railing against Ezekiel for. Margaret had ceased attempting to fight him off when he came to her bed, not out of desire for him, but because fighting only led to a beating before, during, or after the disgusting act. She saw now that her father had begun mistaking her passivity for enjoyment.

He turned on Ezekiel next when he couldn’t think of what else he might shout at Margaret. “You are an abomination!” he shouted at his son. “Get out of my sight before I kill you for defiling my house with your wickedness.” To get his point across, their father scooped up the length of iron piping used for stoking fires and swung it at Ezekiel. The boy managed to duck away from the strike, which didn’t seem to truly be meant to harm him.

Ezekiel regained his feet and placed the kitchen table between himself and his father long enough to escape out the front door before the iron rod could be swung again. Margaret called after him and moved to follow, but she was yanked back down to the floor by her hair when her father caught up to her before the door. He slammed the door with his free hand, threw the iron rod down on the floor with a clatter, and came at her with equal parts rage and desire. Now she fought him, not just for herself but for Ezekiel too. She lashed out with fingernails, kicks, and bites as he pushed her to the floor and tore at her clothes. He roared unspeakable, horrible things at her when she managed to draw blood from his leathery cheek. Now he closed his fist to strike her in earnest. The punch sent stars across her vision and rattled the fight from her. Despite that she was too dazed to fight any further, he struck her again, loosening her front teeth and sending a shock of blood through her mouth. She cried at the pain as he went about his business, but struggled no more for fear he would hit her again.

4.

That evening, with the sun low and red in the western sky, a wagon rolled through town, heavy with dead bodies. Margaret’s father abandoned his work when he saw the herald and the constable leading a pack of men to follow the slowly drawn old wagon, hauled by a mongrel mule. Two boys, no more than six or seven were in the bed of the wagon, blue and icy as though they’d been fished from the depths. With them, a much larger boy, purple and black in the face and around the neck, was Ezekiel.

“The Sheffington brothers washed up near the mill,” the miller leading the wagon told the constable. “When me and my sons retraced the creek to see if anyone else had drowned, we found the Mayhew boy dangling from a rope.”

Her father put on a show of grief that she hadn’t expected him capable of. He wailed at the sky, prayed out loud for God to return his boy to him, and accepted all forms of comfort the gathered men could offer by way of kind words and hands on the shoulder. Margaret hated her father with every growing second and had no intention of praying and waiting for justice when praying had done so little to help her to that point.

5.

Her father didn’t notice that she didn’t eat that night. He didn’t notice her smile as he did. Most damning of all, he didn’t notice the flavor of hemlock mixed in the end of the week stew in which all the meals to that point combined to create a thick gruel. He expired on the floor in wracking pain, spilling the rest of the poisoned bowl of stew across himself in the process.

Margaret turned down the lamps, blew out the candles, and left him where he lay. She knew she would be blamed, and she couldn’t think of a reason why she would even deny it. She would confess when asked, take her punishment which would no doubt be death, and would at last be reunited with her mother and brother. She wondered why she had waited so long to take such steps against her father.

She slept soundly in her own bed that night, certain it would be her last night there, yet equally certain no one would crawl in to disturb her.

6.

She awoke late the following morning to the sound of men in the house. She dressed for the day without concern before emerging from her bedroom. She wasn’t surprised that people had come by and discovered her father as she imagined she’d slept well past dawn and into the morning hours where customers might start wondering why the blacksmith wasn’t at his post. Father Virgil, who claimed to be a descendant of Hanford Vigil for whom the town was named a century ago, was among the men along with the constable and as many other brawny souls as they could fit into the tiny front room of the cabin.

“Witchcraft no doubt,” Father Virgil said. “The old crone must have drowned the Sheffington brothers for her dark art, hung the Mayhew boy when he happened upon her in the act, and then come back to wipe the rest of the family from the earth with a witch’s poison.” The other men nodded and grunted their agreement at his assessment. He turned slowly at Margaret’s entrance, seemingly surprised she wasn’t dead in her bed. When the surprise faded, Father Virgil embraced her with an unwarranted fervor. “My child, thank goodness you are alive. We’re here to help. Be not afraid. We are here to help.”

Margaret was not asked, was not given leave to speak really. They surmised that she must have been too grief-stricken the night before to eat, and that was the only reason she hadn’t been poisoned alongside her father. The old Hessian crone, the witch of Vigil’s Woods was to blame, and they had the answer for such hideousness among their township of the righteous.

Margaret allowed herself to be led from her home. She tried several times to correct the men, but they shushed and silenced her with every attempt, insisting her grief was making her say foolish things. She was given over to the constable’s wife for care, ushered slowly through the streets where the entire village apparently had gathered to stare upon her with mournful eyes.

“Wickedness is rampant these days,” the constable’s wife muttered to her. “Why even now, Jacob has been found to have murdered his wife.”

It took several moments for what she said to permeate the thick fog surrounding Margaret’s head that morning. Jacob had murdered his wife, his pregnant wife, as it turned out. Strangled her to death with his own hands, Margaret was told; he somehow had it in his head that she was having a daughter and that’d been the last straw. Margaret escaped the motherly grasp of the constable’s wife and fled through the streets toward Sarah’s house.

The front door was broken, shattered really, having been pulled from its hinges and hurled onto the front porch, likely done by the men who came to take Jacob into custody. Margaret found her frightened way into her friend’s cabin. It was in the common state of disarray after one of Jacob’s rages, but did not contain Sarah or her woodsman husband. The only major difference, aside from the missing door, was a tattered cornhusk doll lying near a pool of what was likely Sarah’s quickly drying blood.

Margaret wailed her grief, stumbled into the street in search of her friend, clutching the little cornhusk doll to her chest in hopes of returning it when Sarah could be found. The women of the village, normally hard edged and emotionally vacant, found their sympathy to come to Margaret and lead her away to where she might see Sarah one last time.

7.

Margaret was given a bible to pray with and a soft cot in the church’s rectory for recuperation. She lay there, catatonic, for most of the day, clutching the cornhusk doll to her chest. Sarah had been battered unrecognizable before Jacob had choked the life from her, and this was the only hope left for Margaret that somehow the bludgeoned mess of a woman they showed her wasn’t really Sarah, but some other unfortunate soul.

She could feel herself slipping into madness as though she were slowly settling into a frigid lake. Every bit of her numbed to the world as it dipped in and she knew what she believed was becoming farther and farther from the truth. Even knowing this, even knowing the sensation was the unraveling of her mind, she didn’t care—she welcomed it really, and she began to wonder if she might not have been going mad for quite some time.

As the sun began to fade, she heard men shouting and the hoof beats of horses on the cobblestone square. She crept from the bed and absconded out the back of the church, careful not to be seen and careful to carry with her Sarah’s cornhusk doll should she come across her friend. Sarah would probably find it most interesting that some beaten woman had been found in her house.

Whatever commotion was taking place had come and gone through the square like a wildfire. Indeed, fire seemed to be the truth of the situation as the scent of burning wood and burning flesh still lingered in the air. A lynch mob, that’s what it must have been, Margaret surmised. She’d actually seen them before in Vigil’s Rest but not with fire, never with fire. The smoldering corpse of what she guessed used to be Jacob was still strapped to the slowly dwindling remains of a bonfire. Goodness they were organized, Margaret thought wistfully as she inspected the charred body. She certainly needed to find Sarah now to tell her that her husband was dead. Of course, she didn’t know for certain if the burned body was actually Jacob, although she couldn’t think of anyone else deserving of a lynching. A scrap of paper blew against her ankle. She lifted it to find it had a singed end, but what remained entailed the list of crimes against Jacob that warranted such a hasty and public trial ending in an execution. The murder of his wife and unborn child was at the top of the list, but immediately below it was the sin of succumbing to witchcraft and the devil’s desires. Margaret tossed aside the piece of paper. Jacob practicing witchcraft was preposterous—he couldn’t read well enough to follow a hymnal at church. What would the devil want with such a thundering imbecile?

The sound of footsteps and voices broke Margaret from her musings. She stepped back into the shadow of the courthouse that clearly hadn’t been used for Jacob’s trial, and waited behind the brick steps for the coming group to pass. They were women, including the constable’s wife, carrying lanterns, looking for someone.

“…feeble excuse,” one of the women said.

“Burned like so much rubbish is better than he deserved,” another agreed.

“Still, it could be the witch,” the constable’s wife said.

“Father Virgil and the men will see to that all the same,” the first woman said, “but I still say Jacob was a liar until the fire took his lying tongue.”

“Poor little lamb,” the second woman said as they were passing out of hearing range. “It’s a suffering shame the witch would turn on someone who had been so kind to her…”

Margaret’s mind cleared for a moment. They meant Esther. The men were going to kill Esther for being a witch. Margaret wondered if she wasn’t in good company while going mad since most of the town appeared to be joining her.

She raced from her hiding spot and ran for the woods. She knew the forest better than any woodsman or hunter. She could reach Esther before them and tell her to hide. The trail would foil them as it had so many others. The forest wasn’t friendly to men either. It was more than superstition to fear the woods after dark. Things moved among the trees. Esther had said malevolent spirits infested the forest long before the white man came. If she hurried, if she was quick, there might still be time.

Margaret raced through the forest without concern for the spirits who lived there. Madness had made her bold and if she was taken by something crawling in the woods while on her way to help Esther, she could count on God to deliver her to heaven where she would be reunited with her mother and brother. Margaret actually laughed at how the world seemed to be aligning to her will.

She plunged through the creek and ran on. Briefly, through the trees, at great distance, she thought she saw men on horseback with torches, but she was already well ahead of them and they were going in the wrong direction. It might take hours for them to find their way in the dark, or they might not find their way at all.

She broke through the forest in the irregularly shaped corn fields around the stone cabin and finally called out to Esther. The old woman, her only friend left in the world, emerged from the cabin as though Margaret was expected at such a late hour. She held in her hand an ancient lantern of stone, burning animal fat with a low light. Margaret ran to her.

“They’re coming to kill you,” Margaret pleaded with her. “They believe you to be a witch!”

“And a witch I am,” Esther said with a dry laugh. “But I am old, and ready to find my end. Worry not my child; this was a long time in the making and something I welcome.”

Margaret took Esther by the arms, touching her in earnest for the first time in their several year friendship. Esther stiffened in her embrace. She set aside the little lantern and touched Margaret’s stomach with her withered claws. “You are with child,” Esther said hoarsely. “A twisted, unnatural child of unclean union, growing for weeks now.”

“My father…” Margaret began, but it was too horrible to admit aloud. She hoped Esther would understand.

“No need for that,” Esther said. “That place is not for you any longer. You will take my home as your own. It will be your sanctuary and your salvation when I am gone.”

Margaret tried to protest, to say the woods would not be safe for her. A torch hurled through the night sky interrupted her, landing amidst the dried corn fields, setting them slowly ablaze. Another torch followed, and then another, until the cabin was thoroughly surrounded by the flames. The smoke and heat became unbearable, but Esther seemed unhurried by the encroaching fire.

“Come,” Esther said, guiding Margaret into the cabin. “My home has survived several attempts at burning. Men don’t seem to understand that stone cannot be moved by flame.” She lifted a massive shale slab from the floor and guided Margaret into a hollow hole in the earth beneath the cabin, helping her to settle in amidst the sacks of cornmeal and root vegetables. “Stay safe, my child. When what must be done is done, eat of me and take my place.”

Margaret didn’t understand. She tried to protest, but Esther just smiled a toothless old grin and shushed her with a gentle finger to the lips. “You will know what I mean when the time comes,” she said. “I knew you were destined to take my place when I saw you and one day, you will know who is meant to take yours.”

The shale slab lowered over the hole. Margaret scooped a rock from the bottom of the dug out crypt she was lying in and popped it into place before the slab could settle entirely, leaving her a crack to peek out through. The fires burned for some time, and Esther simply waited outside the cabin door. Margaret couldn’t see all of her through the crack, but enough to know where she was. The men dared not approach through the fire or dared not approach until daylight—Margaret didn’t know which, but regardless they held their positions outside of the ring of fire. She could hear their horses snorting and stomping with nervous energy as they circled in the dark.

Finally, with the corn fields reduced to black, smoking ashes, and the cool gray light of the autumn morning pushing its way through the gray frozen fog, they came for Esther. They shouted their accusations, angry, violent voices hurling insults and curses at the old woman. They grasped her, beat her with sticks, and hurled her onto the ground in front of the stone cabin. When Esther was thrown prone beneath their violent stomping feet, Margaret could finally see all of her friend. She was so tiny, so meek under the attacks of the men. Margaret pushed at the shale slab, expecting it to move with ease as Esther had held it with one hand while helping Margaret into the tomb, but she found it completely unbothered by her pushing. She wanted to cry out, but something held her tongue, insisting she wait until what must be done was done.

The sun broke free of the clouds and fog for just a moment, shining brightly on the wretched scene in front of the cabin. One of the men grasped at the rags covering Esther’s head and yanked it free. In the light of day, Esther transformed into a demon of terrible monstrousness. Her mouth was that of a fanged bird, eyes black as night, hands clawed with talons unlike anything Margaret had ever seen. She knew what Esther’s face and hands looked like, or at least she thought she did, but whatever this creature was, it wasn’t her friend anymore. The men reacted with fright and anger at once. They came for her again with their sticks and she made short work of the ones who hesitated, tearing off limbs as they approached, slashing with her claws for the meatiest parts of them.

They were so many and their hatred of her was so strong. Eventually, she fell under their clubs and torches, burning with an inhuman scream at the edge of where Margaret could see. What remained of the men returned to their horses, packed their dead and wounded on the newly rider-less steeds, and took their leave of the woods as though they couldn’t quit the place fast enough.

Margaret waited until she was certain they were gone, coiled her legs beneath her, and attempted to push the shale slab again. It inched upward, but not nearly enough for her to escape. Esther wouldn’t have left her in the hiding place to die. Margaret flopped back into the tomb and began searching the crumbling earthen walls until she found it near her feet—a tiny tunnel, big enough for an old woman or a slender girl like herself. She pushed aside the sacks that had concealed the exit and slithered out through the hole, pushing her way through roots, turning and twisting in a belly crawl as the tunnel seemed to stretch on forever. Finally, she spotted a faint light at the end, and emerged, cleansed by earth on the side of the hill the Hessian homestead sat upon, well away from the cabin.

Margaret walked painfully back up to the cabin to find the smoking body of the Esther creature left for the ravens where the men had burned her. Margaret glanced to the sky and treetops around the clearing. No carrion birds had set upon her yet though. Margaret was certain the smell would reach for miles and she’d taken so long in escaping the cabin, surely they should have come for her by now.

Margaret knelt by the burned body, took one of the barely identifiable limbs between her hands, bowed her head to it, and bit. She twisted her jaw and head until the bite finally tore free. She chewed and swallowed. When this only made her feel stronger, she took a bite, and another bite, and another until she was ravenously consuming her former friend, feeling unearthly changes taking place in her as she fed. Yes, Margaret thought, this is what Esther meant. It had to be.

When she was certain she had taken what she needed, Margaret scooped the remains of her friend and took her into the cabin. She lifted the shale slab as effortlessly as Esther had, and slid the burned and gnawed corpse into the tunnel at the back of the tomb. She easily pulled the earthen roof and walls of the tunnel in around Esther’s body, collapsing the tube that was her salvation around the remains until a proper, if hasty, burial had been effected.

Margaret stood in the middle of the tiny stone cabin, sensing the world in entirely new ways. She could feel things she’d never felt before, hear things she shouldn’t have been able to, and understood reality with such completeness and clarity that she supposed herself divine. More than that, she could feel the child in her that Esther had mentioned. It was dead, as was she, although its soul had not been returned to its body as hers had. It was within her to stay, never to grow larger, never to leave her, always to act as a painful reminder, both emotionally and physically, of the wickedness forced on her.

This pain gnawed at her stomach as she stood, driving her back into the hole beneath the cabin to wait until nightfall. She needed to find the remaining men who had survived the fight with Esther. She needed to find them and punish them for her pain.

Part 9: Peace for the Fallen

Autumn 2010 – Debbie, Annabelle, and Daphne

1.

Annabelle and Debbie finished reading the journal at roughly the same time. The handwriting, which had started so beautiful and precise, slowly descended into wobbles and wavers, barely readable at the end when the clearly undead Margaret had finished her massacre of the remaining men who had killed Esther. The last few pages, penned in her insane hand, spoke of her plans to continue Esther’s work until the day she found the person she knew would replace her.

“This town’s history is thoroughly fucked up,” Annabelle muttered.

“And you say that after knowing only the things that were written down,” Ms. Jensen’s voice startled them from the doorway. She crossed the room and sat on the other side of the table from them, gently sliding the aged, leather-bound journal to face toward her. “This was left within the old blacksmith’s house. It was boxed and stored along with the other books found within until someone actually read it in the 1920s and decided it was a work of fiction written by someone dying of syphilis or lead poisoning. I found it in the back of the old library before the renovation when I was a child. I always loved historic fiction. When I showed it to my sister, she believed it was historic, but certainly not fiction.” Ms. Jensen closed the journal with careful, reverent hands and slid it back across the table to Debbie. “After you saved me, I thought it would be me you would choose. I was so certain for so many years.”

“I didn’t know this part,” Debbie said. “She never told me any of this.”

“Wait, you two know each other?” Annabelle asked, looking disbelievingly from Ms. Jensen to Debbie.

“The little redheaded girl who fell in the creek,” Debbie said.

“I thought you were an angel,” Ms. Jensen confirmed with a nod.

“A lot of people thought that,” Debbie said.

“I’m sorry it wasn’t me,” Ms. Jensen said. She took Annabelle’s hand a smiled to her. “But I’m glad it was you.”

None of them needed to say what was to come next. They’d all read the same words. Only Annabelle saw the change that must be done to break the cycle though, and she wasn’t going to share it until the other task was complete.

2.

The trio marched into the woods on a frigid November night of no great importance. Debbie and Annabelle, who could see perfectly well in the darkness, did their best to guide Ms. Jensen who insisted they call her by her first name, Daphne.

They parked on what was lover’s lane, beneath the old air raid siren, and descended into the forest to find the field of bones where Maggie had enshrined so many of her kills before finally joining them. Her body was still where Debbie and Annabelle had left it. No scavengers would touch it, but the weeks exposed to the elements had left it withered and small. Debbie couldn’t look upon Maggie with anything but a deep melancholy after knowing what fires had forged her.

Debbie carefully, delicately, and even a little lovingly removed Maggie’s frail body from the wood that impaled it and began carrying it through the woods, leading their procession to the old stone cabin. The orphans came out to watch, keeping a respectful distance, although Annabelle could tell by the way Daphne clung to her that the shades were visible to more than just vampires.

Within the cabin that Annabelle said she never would set foot in, they laid Maggie to rest within the tomb beneath the shale slab. In slow work, they dug handfuls of earth from outside and walked it into the cabin until they’d filled in the hole entirely before replacing the slab.

Debbie felt the presence of Maggie fading until it was finally gone. The tether that had held them together severed as quietly as the one holding Maggie to her former body and the woods itself. Debbie and Daphne turned to leave, but Annabelle stopped them before they could start back down the hill.

“It can’t be here anymore,” Annabelle said. To illustrate what she meant, she began pulling rocks out from the cabin, and hurling them down the hill into the trees. “There can’t be a haven here anymore or someone else will use it the same way.” She didn’t care that Debbie and Daphne weren’t helping her; she would rip the cabin down by herself if needs be and she felt strong enough to do just that with every rock she pulled from the structure. “It housed all the shame and wrongness of this fucked up town and it can’t be here anymore!” With enough of the structure weakened by her removal of stones, and a fury building in her from what she knew the cabin to represent, Annabelle pushed the stonewall until the entire cabin came off its base and slid down the back of the hill in a cascade of tumbling rocks.

She walked back down the hill to the stunned Debbie and Daphne. She took her former teacher’s hands to regain her attention from the abrupt destruction of possibly the oldest standing structure in the state of Vermont. Annabelle looked her directly in the eyes and spoke with cold clarity, “Call the police tomorrow, take them to the field of bones, and have them dig up what’s there.”

Daphne nodded her understanding.

As they walked back toward the bluff that held what was formerly make out point, the orphans around them began to fade. Debbie watched as the shadows became fewer and fewer, drifting off in different directions, speaking to her no more.

“They thought I was going to be the one to save them,” Debbie murmured. She turned to Annabelle and took her by the hand. “But it was you.”

Annabelle seemed unmoved by the words. A severe edge grew in her after reading Maggie’s journal; Debbie worried about it. “I need to be free of this place,” Annabelle whispered. “We need to get out of here and never come back. Whatever makes us what we are is capable of starting this all over again.”

The sensation of hope that was held in her acceptance to college, the possibility of New York City, which was torn away by her parents and Pastor Gunderson, returned to Debbie. It was the same hope she’d had when Grace offered her New Haven, but tarnished then by disbelief. Finally, Annabelle needed it as much as Debbie did, and Debbie swore to herself she would move heaven and earth if that’s what it took for them to be free. She gave Annabelle’s hand a squeeze and smiled to her.

“Bright illuminations, dolly,” Debbie whispered to her. “I’ll cut out of here with you wherever you want to go.”

3.

Every day the police, forensic specialists, and even some cultural archaeologists removed bodies from the forest around the area known as the bone field. Every corresponding night, Annabelle and Debbie would walk the woods, feeling less and less of the old scars and seeing fewer and fewer of the spirits. They suspected the forest would never quite be clean of the damage done within it, although the more of the world Annabelle saw, the more she suspected that was true of many places.

Once Annabelle had made the decision to leave Vigil’s Rest, the world she saw was expansive and growing almost hourly. They went to New Haven to see if they would like to move there. They went to New York, Boston, Portland Maine, and Providence Rhode Island. They were methodical in their search for where they might fit in as they no longer had something to run from—rather, for the first time for either Debbie or Annabelle, they were running toward life.

The lone, minor catch in their plans occurred right after returning from a weekend trip to New York. After months of slowly unraveling the concentrated graveyard, the authorities found Grace’s body. The forensic specialists identified her through mitochondrial DNA linking back to the Corkers who had settled in Rhode Island. The newspaper printed a story about the long lost daughter of Vigil’s Rest finally being found after more than fifty years. A week after that, they found Phil’s body as well—the newspaper speculated they would find Deborah Poole any day. The public interest in dredging of the past reached a fevered pitch, stayed that way for a week, and then, by the end of the second week, nobody cared when Debbie’s body wasn’t found. Annabelle told Debbie that was the way things were now—nobody had an attention span anymore.

The night Grace’s body was officially laid to rest in the town cemetery, Annabelle found Debbie inspecting the locket she’d given Grace, retrieved from the bone field all those years ago, with two faded pictures still inside. Debbie offered to get rid of it if it bothered Annabelle. It didn’t bother her though, and Annabelle thought it was worth keeping as a reminder, albeit a sad one.

They ultimately decided on New Haven as their destination, although both Annabelle and Debbie believed it would only be the first of many moves. They waited until summer, with Annabelle continuing her work at the ice cream shop while Debbie found she was actually quite the transcriptionist. Medical records was where she started, but she soon moved on to archival work, and even legal, able to work from home and telecommute the larger jobs from as far away as California and Florida. She’d taken a typing class in high school, excelled at it on the old type writers, and was masterful on a computer that could keep up with her inhuman dexterity. More than that, she was a fast learner and charming beyond reason over the telephone.

That was to be their start, and Debbie seemed thrilled with the possibility of getting a first apartment with Annabelle, who was to transfer to a Baskin Robbins in New Haven for the time being. When Annabelle told Debbie with a wry smile and a wink that Connecticut was one of a handful of states that would allow them to get married, Debbie thought she might start saving for a dress, once she got over the shock of such a thing even being possible.

Daphne Jensen retired early from teaching at the high school to write a historical novel about Vigil’s Rest. She saw Annabelle and Debbie off the night they left, proudly showing them the acceptance letter of the book being sold. She promised them a portion of the royalties if the book ever earned any as they were instrumental in knowing what truly happened. They hugged her and thanked her, thinking it was all nothing more than a sweet sentiment until checks actually started arriving from the publisher.

They lived to become part of a community, learning the lesson of what seclusion did to Esther. They lived to love one another, learning the lesson of what anger did to Margaret. But mostly they lived for the tomorrow that Debbie hadn’t thought possible and Annabelle thought would never come.

About the Author

Cassandra Duffy spent most of her childhood being precocious, which stopped being entertaining or impressive when she grew into an adult, at which point she had to start being precious. After being an outcast child prodigy it was no surprise when she graduated from one of the many fine University of California schools a year early to follow her girlfriend in a cross country move.

She writes a free-lance sex advice column found in various lesbian magazines and dating websites. Her short story collections and novels can be found on this very website!

Two of her greatest prides are being a true California girl and author of some truly naughty things. She is a dutiful partially-Asian daughter who is beloved by her fairly traditional Korean father who thinks having a gay daughter is just fine as long as she keeps playing coed flag football. She is a stereotypical younger sister, and an adoring aunt of a hilarious little boy. Being a modern techno-freak, gamer-girl, she spent most of her childhood dreaming of being a video game designer, but changed her mind and brought her dreams of world building and story-weaving to writing unique romance novels.

Cassandra is a gleefully monogamous girlfriend to an earthbound goddess who was once her high school bully, but has done a magnificent job of making up for all the school girl nastiness ever since. When she isn’t being an avid fang girl (vampire fan girl) or tormenting people in online gaming, she lives and writes in Winter Park, Florida with her partner and soul mate Nichole and their two cats: Dragon and Josephine.

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Witch of Vigil’s Grove – Summer 1955 – Debbie

1

2

3

Part 2: The Pariah of Vigil’s Rest – Winter 1955 – Grace

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Part 3: Slumber in Broken Earth – Winter 1955 – Debbie

1

2

3

4

5

6

Part 4: Repentance and Revenge of the Father – Spring 1956 – Henry

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Part 5: Angel of Solemnity – Autumn 1982 – Daphne

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Part 6: Blood Red Riding Hood – Autumn 2005 – Annabelle

1

2

3

4

5

Part 7: Unburied Bones – Autumn 2005 – Annabelle and Debbie

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Part 8: The Twisted Root – Autumn 1849 – Margaret

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Part 9: Peace for the Fallen – Autumn 2010 – Debbie, Annabelle, and Daphne

1

2

3

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Witch of Vigil’s Grove – Summer 1955 – Debbie

1

2

3

Part 2: The Pariah of Vigil’s Rest – Winter 1955 – Grace

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Part 3: Slumber in Broken Earth – Winter 1955 – Debbie

1

2

3

4

5

6

Part 4: Repentance and Revenge of the Father – Spring 1956 – Henry

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Part 5: Angel of Solemnity – Autumn 1982 – Daphne

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Part 6: Blood Red Riding Hood – Autumn 2005 – Annabelle

1

2

3

4

5

Part 7: Unburied Bones – Autumn 2005 – Annabelle and Debbie

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Part 8: The Twisted Root – Autumn 1849 – Margaret

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Part 9: Peace for the Fallen – Autumn 2010 – Debbie, Annabelle, and Daphne

1

2

3