The Ghost Tree E-Book

Christina Henry

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 545

Beschreibung

Lauren and Miranda have been best friends forever. Every day one would say, "Meet me by the old ghost-tree" and they would have adventures together. But now Miranda only likes boys, and Lauren's father was found in the woods with his heart torn out, and no one was ever caught. So when Lauren has a vision of a monster dragging human remains through the woods, she knows she can't just do nothing.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Christina Henry and available from Titan Books

Title Page

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Copyright

Dedication

Part One: The Girls

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Part Two: Among the Witches

Part Three: Strands

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Part Four: The Fair

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About the Author

THE GHOST TREE CHRISTINA HENRY

When the bodies of two girls are found torn apart in her hometown, Lauren is surprised, but she also expects that the police won’t find the killer. After all, the year before her father’s body was found, and everyone has moved on. Even her best friend, Miranda, is more interested in boys than in spending time at the old ghost tree, the way they used to when they were kids. So when Lauren has a vision of a monster dragging the remains of the girls through the woods, she knows she can’t just do nothing. But as she draws closer to answers, she realizes that her seemingly normal town might be rotten at the centre…

A brand-new chilling read from the bestselling author of Alice and Lost Boy.

9781785659799 | 6th October 2020 | Paperback & eBook | £8.99 | 512pp

Press & Publicity: Lydia [email protected]

These are uncorrected advance proofs bound for review purposes only. All cover art, trim sizes, page counts, months of publication and prices should be considered tentative and subject to change without notice. Please check publication information and any quotations against the bound copy of the book. We urge this for the sake of editorial accuracy as well as for your legal protection and ours.

Also by Christina Henry and available from Titan Books

ALICE

RED QUEEN

LOOKING GLASS

LOST BOY

THE MERMAID

THE GIRL IN RED

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The Ghost TreePrint edition ISBN: 9781785659799E-book edition ISBN: 9781785659805

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UPwww.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: October 202010 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Tina Raffaele 2020. All rights reserved.Published by arrangement with the Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

Tina Raffaele asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Alexis Nixon, in October country

PART ONE

THE GIRLS

1

JUNE 1985WEDNESDAY

Lauren glanced down at her feet as she pedaled her bike toward the woods. She wore brand-new turquoise high-tops; they looked sort of like the Chuck Taylors she’d wanted, but they were off-brand from Kmart. They didn’t have the Chuck label in the back but they were still pretty cool. She thought so, anyway.

They would have to be cool because her mom had told her repeatedly they couldn’t afford the name-brand ones. At least no one else at school had turquoise. They were so bright they practically glowed in the summer sun, but by the time she went back to school in the fall they would be properly beaten up and she wouldn’t look like a dork.

By the time she went back to school she would be almost fifteen (the end of November—five months away still), which meant she would be one of the older kids in the freshman class but still younger than Miranda, whose birthday had been the week before. Miranda never failed to remind her that this meant she would get her driver’s license before Lauren did, but Lauren didn’t care as long as she was riding to school in a car (even if it was not her own) instead of on her bike.

Lauren knew Mom didn’t want her and Miranda meeting in the woods. Especially after last year. Especially after Lauren’s dad was found near that old cabin. Mom thought Lauren was macabre for going anywhere near the place where her father was murdered.

But Lauren was about as interested in her mother’s opinion as her mother was in Lauren’s—that is to say, not at all. Mom never loved Dad as much as Lauren did. Her mom didn’t understand that when Lauren was in the woods it meant she was in the place he was last alive.

She and Miranda always met under the ghost tree. They’d done so since they were very small, for so long that Lauren couldn’t remember who’d thought of the idea first. One of them would call the other on the telephone and say, “Meet me by the old ghost tree,” and they would both go.

In the secret shadows of the woods, they could have adventures. They built forts and ran through streams and climbed trees and made rope swings. They made a secret base near the cabin that was tucked away in the woods. This was long before Lauren’s dad was found there, and it had been some time since they used it as a base.

In the last year or so things had changed. Miranda didn’t like to get dirty anymore, so she didn’t want to swing over the trickling little creek that ran through the forest or roll in the dead leaves. Mostly she wanted to do things Lauren was not interested in, like paint their nails or braid each other’s hair or talk about boys that Miranda thought were cute—older boys, always, boys that would not be the least bit interested in little freshman girls.

Despite this they still preferred to meet by the ghost tree. It was their special place.

Lauren raced past the Imperial drive-in on the outskirts of town. They were showing a double feature—The Goonies and Cocoon. The wide lot was littered with rubbish from the night before—empty popcorn cups, candy wrappers, cigarette butts. Sometimes Lauren helped Mr. Harper, the owner, clean up the lot in exchange for $10 and a free ticket for her and Miranda to that night’s show, but she’d already seen The Goonies twice and Miranda said Cocoon was about old people so they never stayed for the second feature.

The back of the movie screen pressed against the woods that brushed against the town. Smiths Hollow was the name of her town, and Lauren had always liked the name because it reminded her of Sleepy Hollow.

She and her dad used to watch that cartoon every year on Halloween, Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Even though Ichabod’s name came first in the title, the Sleepy Hollow story was actually second in the film and Lauren liked that better. She liked anticipating the moment when the Headless Horseman would appear on screen, laughing his insane laugh and swinging a giant sword.

When she was little she used to snuggle close into her dad’s arm when that part came on and her heart would beat so fast, but there was nothing to worry about really because she was with her daddy. Of course it had been years since it scared her, but every year she snuggled up next to him. He always smelled a little bit of grease and oil, even after a shower, and also of the Old Spice Soap-on-a-Rope that she gave him every year for Father’s Day.

Lauren wondered if, when Halloween came, she would be able to turn on the cartoon again and watch it with her little brother, David. He’d been too small to watch it the year before.

Miranda had wanted Lauren to sleep over last Halloween, so they could watch “real” scary movies on her VCR. Lauren’s family didn’t have a VCR, and Miranda definitely viewed this as a drawback to sleeping over at Lauren’s house.

They always trick-or-treated together every year, but after their candy bags were full they went their separate ways. Last year Miranda didn’t want to trick-or-treat at all, but Lauren persuaded her to go out so Miranda had thrown together a costume of old clothes at the last second and went as a hobo. She’d complained about how lame and babyish collecting candy was the whole time and then got annoyed when Lauren told her that she had to go home after.

“I thought you were going to watch Halloween with me,” Miranda said. “It’s the perfect night for it!”

Lauren shook her head. “We can do it another night. I have something I have to do with my dad.”

“It won’t be the same on another night,” Miranda said. “I can’t believe you dragged me all over town to get a bunch of stupid little candy bars and we’re not even going to watch a scary movie now.”

“I’ll take your candy if you don’t want it,” Lauren said, holding her bag open.

Miranda’s mouth twisted up. “No way. I walked for it, so I’m eating it.”

She’d gone home in a huff, but the next time Lauren slept over they did watch Halloween. Or rather, Miranda watched it, laughing hysterically every time someone was slaughtered by the killer, and Lauren peered through her fingers and hoped she would be able to sleep without nightmares. She didn’t like scary movies. Miranda seemed inured to them.

Anyway, Lauren was glad she’d gone home that night, because it was the last time she’d watch Ichabod and Mr. Toad with her dad. Less than a month later he was dead.

He was dead and nobody would talk about it. Nobody would talk about why it happened or how. The police chief told Lauren’s mom it must have been some drifter, some sicko who went from town to town. But that didn’t make a bit of sense to Lauren. Why would some sicko come to Smiths Hollow just to kill her dad?

And nobody ever told her what her dad was doing out that late at night in the woods, either. Every time Lauren mentioned it her mother’s lips would go flat and pull tight at the edges and she would say, “We are not discussing this, Lauren.”

Lauren reached the scrubby edge of the woods and pulled the brakes on her bike. It was a ten-speed, a grown-up gift for her last birthday even though she wasn’t very tall yet and probably never would be. Miranda told her that girls stopped growing like a year after they got their periods, and Lauren hadn’t gotten hers yet so she hoped she wouldn’t top out at five foot three.

Miranda had gotten her period almost a year before, but both her parents were tall so Miranda towered over Lauren by about half a foot. She also had long, long legs that always looked good in whatever she wore, and Lauren had to squelch the flare of jealousy that bubbled up whenever she saw Miranda looking so cool and beautiful and grown-up.

Lauren hopped off her bike and wheeled it into the forest, following a path worn by her own feet and Miranda’s. The bike bumped over the tree roots and kicked up tiny rocks that bit into Lauren’s shins.

Some people didn’t like the woods near Smiths Hollow. Well, if Lauren was honest, almost everyone didn’t like the woods. She’d heard more than one person say they were “spooky” and “uncanny” and “scary,” but Lauren didn’t think so.

She liked the trees and their secretive natures, and all the little creatures that scurried into the brush when they heard her approach. And there were lots of places to sit and think and be alone and listen to the wind in the leaves. There were many days when Miranda went home and Lauren stayed in the forest by herself, curled into the notch of a tree while she read a book.

Even Lauren’s dad had said that the woods made him uncomfortable.

“I always feel like I’m being spied on whenever I walk near there,” he confessed to her one day. They were both at the kitchen sink scrubbing their hands—Lauren’s were covered in mud, and her father’s had the usual contingent of grease from his work at the garage.

“‘I always feel like somebody’s watching me,’” Lauren sang as she walked, although she didn’t really. If anyone was watching she felt that it was a benign somebody.

She liked that song a lot, although Miranda didn’t think much of it. Miranda had listened to Def Leppard’s Pyromania album nonstop since she discovered it the previous year, and whenever Lauren came over she would put it on. Lauren was pretty sure she could live the rest of her life without ever hearing “Rock of Ages” again.

The ghost tree was about a ten-minute walk from the place where Lauren dismounted her bike. Miranda was already there, arms crossed and leaning against the tree with her eyes closed. Lauren wondered what Miranda was thinking about.

She wore a white sleeveless shirt that buttoned down the front, and Lauren could see her training bra through it. Lauren had started wearing a training bra too even though she really didn’t need it yet. By the time she actually needed the trainer Miranda would be wearing women’s bras, probably.

The shirt was tucked into her jeans—Jordache, naturally, and their ankles brushed against her white Adidas shoes with the black stripes on the side. Miranda always had name-brand everything, because her parents were both managers at the canned chili factory and they would take her to the next town over to go to the mall for her clothes.

She was also an only child, which meant her parents didn’t have to worry about having money for the next kid’s stuff. Lauren had heard her mother sighing many times that the trouble with having a girl and then a boy was that you couldn’t reuse anything. Not that there had been so much stuff around for reusing by the time David was born—he was ten years younger than Lauren, a “surprise package,” as Lauren’s dad called him. Lauren’s parents had thought their late nights with a colicky baby were long gone.

“What took you so long?” Miranda said, straightening when she heard the rattle of Lauren’s bike chain. “And what are you wearing?”

What are you wearing was what Lauren wanted to ask, but instead she looked down at her Cubs shirt and cutoff jeans and said, “Clothes for playing in the woods.”

Miranda shook her hair, an elaborately teased and sprayed mass that had been wrestled into a high ponytail. “We’re not playing in the woods. What are we, nine? We’re going to the Dream Machine.”

“Why didn’t you just say we were going to the Dream Machine?” Lauren asked.

Lauren didn’t really care about arcade games except maybe pinball, and she especially didn’t like going to the Dream Machine because lately it meant that she and Miranda would stand around watching boys that Miranda thought were cute.

“Tad asked me to meet him there,” Miranda said excitedly, ignoring Lauren’s question. “He actually called me today.”

So why do I have to go? Lauren thought. If she’d known what Miranda had planned she would have brought a book to read. There was nothing more boring than watching some guy playing Pac-Man. Also, what kind of stupid name was Tad? Lauren wasn’t sure she remembered who exactly Tad was, either. It was hard to keep track of which boy was at the top of Miranda’s scrolling list of interests.

“And he said he’s going to bring some of his friends, so there will be someone for you, too,” Miranda finished. She said this last bit like she had gotten a really amazing present for Lauren and couldn’t wait to hear how much she loved it.

“Oh,” Lauren said.

“Let’s go,” Miranda said. “Leave your bike here. We can cut through the woods and come out behind Frank’s.”

Frank’s Deli was directly across the street from the Dream Machine. Lauren didn’t like coming out of the woods there because there were always rats running around behind Frank’s. She always told her mother not to buy lunch meat there because of that.

“Don’t be silly, Lauren,” Mom would say. “Of course there are rats outside. They’re attracted to garbage. That doesn’t mean there are rats inside.”

“It doesn’t mean there aren’t, either,” Lauren said darkly, and refused to eat so much as a slice of roast beef from Frank’s. It meant a lot of peanut butter sandwiches because her mom would almost always go to Frank’s unless she went shopping at the big super grocery store in the next town and got deli meat while she was there.

“Which one is Tad again?” Lauren asked as she leaned her bike against the tree. There was no worry that anything would happen to it. No one ever stole anything that belonged to the ghost tree.

Miranda hit Lauren’s shoulder with the back of her hand. “He works at Wagon Wheel, remember? We just went there to see him last week.”

Lauren dredged up the memory of a greasy-haired guy throwing two slices of pizza in front of them as they’d sat on the tall chairs at the counter, feet dangling. He’d barely acknowledged Miranda’s existence.

“That guy?” Lauren asked.

“He looks just like Matt Dillon in The Outsiders,” Miranda said with a little sigh.

“No, he doesn’t,” Lauren said.

Usually she let Miranda’s statements pass by without an argument, but she couldn’t let that one go. Lauren had the poster with the cast of The Outsiders on it hanging on the back of her bedroom door, and she got a good look at Matt Dillon every morning. Tad did not look a thing like him.

“He totally does!” Miranda insisted.

“No way,” Lauren said.

“Well, he’s going to be a junior and he has a Camaro,” Miranda said, as if this settled everything.

When Miranda said things like that, Lauren could feel the strings that had bound them together their whole life unknotting one by one. Lauren really didn’t care if he had a Camaro, and the old Miranda wouldn’t have either. The old Miranda would have wanted to stay in the woods instead of going to the Dream Machine. But the old Miranda had disappeared in the last year, leaving Lauren to wonder why she still came when Miranda called.

Maybe it’s just hard to let your best friend go, even if you have nothing in common anymore, Lauren thought, and sighed a little.

They emerged from the woods behind Frank’s Deli. Two rats, a very large one and a little tiny one, abandoned the bread crust they were chewing and ran behind the three large metal garbage cans lined up next to the back door.

“Gross,” Miranda said as Lauren flinched and made a little squeaking sound.

They heard the sound of soft laughter. Lauren saw Jake Hanson, the son of one of her neighbors, smoking a cigarette behind the electronics shop next door. He was three or four years older than Lauren, so their paths had rarely crossed since she’d been very small. She remembered that once, when she was maybe seven or eight, he’d shown her how to throw a baseball and had spent a half hour patiently catching her wild pitches.

Miranda went straight for the narrow walkway between Frank’s and the electronics shop, ignoring Jake entirely.

Lauren paused, because it really went against the grain for her to pretend someone didn’t exist. “Hey, Jake.”

He was very tall now, at least a foot taller than Lauren, but his jeans barely hung onto his waist with a belt hooked all the way to the last hole. He had on a black uniform polo with the words Best Electronics embroidered on the upper left side.

“Hey, Lauren,” he said, blowing smoke out of his nose.

She wondered when his voice had started to sound so grown-up. He didn’t really sound like a boy anymore—but then, she supposed that he wasn’t. He was probably eighteen years old now, or close to it—old enough to have real stubble on his cheeks and not just the stringy fuzz most high school boys sported.

His blue eyes looked her up and down, assessing. Assessing what, Lauren wasn’t sure. She’d always liked his eyes, how the blue contrasted with his dark hair, but now something in the way they looked at her made the blood rise in her cheeks.

“Nice shoes,” he said, and she couldn’t tell if he meant it or he was making fun of her.

“Lau-ren,” Miranda called impatiently.

“Better hurry,” Jake said conversationally. He dropped the end of his cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with the sole of his black boots. “See you around, Lauren.”

“Yeah,” she said, jogging after Miranda. She didn’t really know why but she felt flustered, and when she felt flustered she got annoyed.

“What were you doing?” Miranda said.

“Saying hi,” Lauren said, even more annoyed now because Miranda had clearly heard the conversation.

“You shouldn’t say hi to losers like him,” Miranda said.

“He’s my neighbor,” Lauren said. Her face still felt hot and she knew from long experience that it would take a while for her cheeks to return to their normal color.

Miranda leaned in close to Lauren, stealing a quick glance over her shoulder to ensure that nobody was nearby and listening.

“He deals drugs,” Miranda whispered.

Lauren frowned. “Give me a break. Drugs? In Smiths Hollow? Where would he even get them from?”

“There are drugs even in Smiths Hollow,” Miranda said mysteriously.

The only thing Lauren really knew about drugs came from movies where a character would occasionally smoke a joint. Miranda had seen Scarface, though Lauren hadn’t, and had acted like an authority on all things cocaine-related since then.

They emerged from between the storefronts of the deli and the electronics shop. The Dream Machine was directly across the street. All the windows were open. The sound of loud music combined with the persistent bleep of electronics and the occasional whoop of a player was easily heard over the car engines on Main Street.

Lauren looked both ways so they could cross, but Miranda grabbed her arm and pointed toward the Sweet Shoppe a few doors away.

“I need some Tic Tacs,” she said. “I ate a tuna fish sandwich for lunch before Tad called. If I’d known he was going to call I wouldn’t have eaten anything. I don’t want to look bloated in front of him.”

She patted her paper-flat stomach as she said this and glanced at Lauren as if she expected her to say You’re not bloated.

But Lauren was only half paying attention to Miranda. Going to the Sweet Shoppe meant that they had to cross in front of the large glass windows of Best Electronics. Jake Hanson was back behind the counter, cigarette break over, and was hunched over what looked like a pile of black plastic and wires.

She quickly looked away, first because she didn’t want to get caught staring, and second because if he did look up she didn’t know if she should wave or pretend not to see him. Her gaze shot out into the road and the passing cars.

A maroon station wagon was coming down Main Street and Lauren pretended to be absorbed in Miranda’s face as it went by. The one person Lauren never had any trouble pretending not to see was her mother.

2

“Come on, David,” Karen diMucci said, unbuckling her son and gathering him out of the back seat. She’d gotten lucky and found a parking space right in front of Frank’s, so she should have been in a better mood. It was always exhausting to walk more than a block or two towing David and the groceries, especially in the June heat. Today she would get to avoid that.

Just like Lauren avoided my eyes as I passed.

She tried not to let the irritation she felt leak into her tone, but David heard the bite and looked up at her in that serious inquiring way that he had.

“Let’s get some sandwich stuff,” she said, deliberately injecting a hearty note. “And then we’ll get some ice cream at the Sweet Shoppe after, okay?”

“Okeh,” David said.

Lauren and Miranda would surely be gone from the shop by then, Karen thought. Not that she had to avoid her own daughter. But she knew if she saw Lauren now she would be annoyed and unable to keep herself from saying so, and then Lauren would give her the silent treatment all evening for embarrassing her in public.

Karen placed David on his feet and took his hand. He didn’t try to squirm away or run ahead the way most other four-year-olds did. Lauren had been like that—always trying to shake her off, even as a small child.

The air-conditioned cool of the deli was welcome after the stifling heat outside. The weather report in the Smiths Hollow Observer had said the temperature would reach the mid-eighties that day, but it already felt much hotter because there was absolutely no wind. The heat just seemed to settle in and stagnate, especially on Main Street. There were no trees to provide shade—the town fathers had decided some time ago that there were quite enough trees in the woods and no need for the town to spend money maintaining plant life along the sidewalks.

Karen got in line. There were three other people in front of her, all people she knew by sight but not well. In a small town like Smiths Hollow you knew almost everyone by sight. She was grateful not to be forced to accept sympathetic looks and awkward small talk from an acquaintance.

Lately she dreaded leaving the house for just this reason—that she might bump into someone she knew from the PTA or who used to have their car fixed at Joe’s garage. People who weren’t really close enough to be called friends but who felt compelled to stop and ask how she was doing and rub her shoulder and tell her that they hoped things would get better soon.

Karen always did everything she could to hurry along these encounters, checking her watch, saying she had pressing appointments—anything to make the other person just go. She hated the false sympathy, the way the conversations would trail off into sighs.

David waited patiently at her side while they stood in line. Really, he is the best kid in the world, Karen thought. He was good-natured and thoughtful and it never bothered him to wait anywhere. He would just stare around with his big brown eyes—the color and shape matching hers so exactly that everyone always exclaimed that he looked “just like his mommy”—and think his own little thoughts.

Then later when they were alone, when she was giving him his lunch or they were driving to the bank or playing in the sandbox in the backyard, he would tell her what he’d been thinking of, and it always amazed her that such deep thoughts emerged from the mind of her four-year-old.

“Mr. Adamcek likes for everyone to see his money,” David said one day.

Karen, who’d been balancing her checkbook and trying not to cry at the dwindling size of her checking account, had looked up. David was playing with Play-Doh on the kitchen floor. He had newspapers spread around so he wouldn’t get the floor dirty—his idea, not hers. He was that kind of kid.

“How do you know that?” Karen asked.

“He takes a long time to put his change back in his wallet, and sometimes he just stands there at the counter and holds his wallet open while he’s talking,” David said as he rolled the red Play-Doh into a new shape.

Earlier that day Karen had stopped in at the convenience store on her way home from the library because they were out of milk. She didn’t really like buying milk from there because it was usually ten or twenty cents more expensive than the grocery store, but the grocery was out of her way and she didn’t feel like driving all the way over there.

It was true that Paul Adamcek had been in line in front of her buying three packs of Marlboros, and now that she thought about it she realized he had been holding his wallet open the whole time so that it was impossible to miss the stack of $20s inside the billfold.

“He’s going to get robbed if he keeps doing that,” Karen muttered.

“He doesn’t think anyone will try,” David said. “Mr. Adamcek thinks he’s really tough.”

Karen wondered how David had inferred this. It was true that Paul thought he was a tough guy, but she wondered what David saw that made him realize it.

His preschool teacher had, at first, thought there was something wrong with David because he was so often silent. He liked to play with the other children and got along with everyone, but he didn’t talk very much. People often made that mistake, that kids who weren’t talkative were stupid. David wasn’t stupid. He just thought before he spoke, and he spent more time looking and listening than making noise.

“Morning, Karen,” Frank said when Karen finally reached the counter. He leaned out a little so he could see David. “And how are you today, young man?”

David waved up to Frank, and Frank winked at him.

“What can I get for you today?”

Karen read off her list. “Half pound of turkey, half pound of American cheese, and a quarter pound of roast beef.”

When Joe was alive she’d have ordered three times the amount of everything, because Joe had eaten two sandwiches for lunch every day and he didn’t like his sandwiches to be stingy with the meat. But Joe wasn’t alive and Lauren wouldn’t eat anything from Frank’s, so there wasn’t any point in ordering a lot when there was nobody there to eat it. She couldn’t afford to throw away food.

She looked at the premade salads that Frank had in the cooler while she waited. It would be easy to pick up some potato salad to have with lunch, but it would definitely be cheaper to make it herself, and she did have several potatoes in the pantry.

Frank handed Karen her order along with a Tootsie Pop for David. He kept the lollipops behind the counter for his “special customers,” as he called them.

“Thank you, Mr. Frank,” David said as Karen handed him the lollipop.

Karen flashed Frank a grateful smile.

“How’s that girl of yours?” Frank asked. There was no one waiting behind Karen.

Karen shrugged. “Oh, you know. A teenage girl.”

Frank had three grown daughters of his own, so he did know. “She’ll be human again in a few years. Just hang on.”

“I’m hanging, all right,” Karen said ruefully. “By my fingernails.”

Frank laughed and waved at David. “Take care of your mama, okay, David?”

He nodded gravely. “Okeh, Mr. Frank. I will.”

Karen and David pushed out into the hot June sunshine. “Ice cream sounds like a really good idea, doesn’t it, bud?”

David carefully tucked his lollipop into the pocket of his shorts for later. “We haven’t had lunch yet.”

“I think we can have a little dessert before lunch today. What do you think?”

He smiled up at her. “If you say so, Mommy.”

“I say so,” Karen said, tucking the bag of lunch meat under her elbow next to her purse. They would have to get their ice cream and eat it quickly. In this weather the meat would spoil before they got home.

They had gone only a few feet when David stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

“What’s the matter?” Karen asked.

David tilted his head to one side and then to the other, like he was listening to something coming from far away.

“Mrs. Schneider,” David said. “She’s screaming.”

“What?” Karen said. She crouched down so she could look into his eyes. They were focused on something but it wasn’t Karen. “David, what’s going on?”

His eyes seemed to come back from wherever they’d gone. He looked right at Karen.

“I told you,” he said. “It’s Mrs. Schneider. She won’t stop screaming. There’s so much blood.”

3

Mrs. Schneider had spent the morning peering through the curtains at her across-the-street new neighbors. She didn’t know just what the world was coming to when Mexicans could move onto a decent street where decent people lived without so much as a by-your-leave. They played loud music in Spanish and they shouted at each other in Spanish and they always seemed to be cooking something foreign.

If they wanted to eat strange food and speak a strange language, then why hadn’t they just stayed in their own country instead of coming here to take jobs away from good American folk? she wondered.

She knew that most of the adults in that house had jobs on the canning line at the chili factory and she didn’t think that was right, even though Mrs. Schneider didn’t know anyone who’d actually lost a job on account of these creeping Mexican intruders.

It was the principle of the thing, she decided. What if a real American wanted a job at the chili factory and couldn’t get one because of them? And one of them was actually a police officer! She’d seen a man that lived there—she couldn’t be bothered to remember all these foreign names—climbing into a Smiths Hollow squad car every morning. How could such a thing even be allowed?

She’d noticed Karen diMucci from down the street talking to one of the women who lived there, and their young children even played together. Mrs. Schneider had thought about warning her off but then decided that she’d better not. Karen might take offense. Everyone knew that Mexicans and Italians were practically the same, though Mrs. Schneider had to admit that the Italians made better food.

She wasn’t a racist, though. There were lots of black people in Smiths Hollow and Mrs. Schneider didn’t have a problem with any of them. They were all good and clean and hardworking—well, except for that Harry Jackson, who could be found in the Arena tavern at all hours of the day and night. Though even that was understandable. He just hadn’t been the same since his wife got cancer and passed on, so one had to make allowances.

She looked at the clock and decided it was time to take herself to the deli in town and pick up something for dinner. Since her husband died of congestive heart failure five years earlier Mrs. Schneider hadn’t bothered with cooking very much. She’d never enjoyed it, had only cooked for him because he liked home-cooked dinners. Most of the time she ate like a bird, anyway—just a half a sandwich or a cup of soup.

There wasn’t any point in driving herself all the way over to the next town to go to the large shiny supermarket, even though her next-door-neighbor Mrs. Walker said the supermarket had better sales. Besides, Mrs. Schneider liked to stand by the counter and chat with Frank and catch up on “all the news,” as she put it.

Mrs. Schneider collected her purse, double-checked to make sure the front door was locked ( you really couldn’t be too careful with these foreigners in the neighborhood), and went out through the kitchen to the small back porch.

She noticed the flies first, a black swarm of them, many more than there ought to be even on a hot day like today. Her first thought was that a raccoon or a fox had died in her yard, which would necessitate a call to the town hall to have it removed by Animal Control. Like many yards in Smiths Hollow, Mrs. Schneider’s backyard abutted the woods and it wasn’t unusual for the occasional critter to wander through.

Her husband had put up high fences on both sides so “the neighbors couldn’t spy in”—Mr. Schneider had been a fastidiously private man, unwilling to have one of the neighbors spot him grilling and offer a beer that he might be forced to reciprocate—and sometimes animals got confused by the blocked-in lanes, the house and the detached garage, and the fences that enclosed it.

Then the smell permeated her irritated thoughts about calling for Animal Control—it always took them so long to come out, which she considered absurd in a town the size of Smiths Hollow—and she covered her mouth and nose, gasping. The smell was terrible, beyond terrible, and she wondered for a moment if a deer had died back there.

The cluster of flies hovered over the edge of the grass where it dipped down into a little ditch before the woods began. Mrs. Schneider couldn’t see clearly from the porch what the flies were picking at, and she sighed.

She was going to have to investigate, and she didn’t really care to get closer to the stink emanating from whatever it was. But if she called Animal Control with just a vague “I think something died in my backyard,” that smart-mouth dispatcher Christy Gallagher would tell her that she couldn’t dispatch Animal Control if they weren’t certain an animal was involved.

“That girl is fresh,” Mrs. Schneider said to herself, using a word her own mother had always used to describe young and disrespectful sorts.

She pulled a white cotton handkerchief out of her purse, then dabbed a little bit of her Estée Lauder perfume in the cloth before covering her nose and mouth with it.

She was going to place her purse down on the porch for a moment but then decided that she’d better not. Anyone could come in the yard gate while her back was turned and run off with her checkbook and wallet. After all, the neighborhood was not what it used to be.

With her purse tucked safely under her right arm and her left hand holding the perfumed handkerchief to her nose, Mrs. Schneider cautiously approached the black buzzing cloud of flies. Her mind had already leapt ahead to the inconvenience—she would have to put off her trip to Frank’s while she waited for Animal Control to get their bottoms in gear—and so she stepped in the blood before she realized it.

She felt the sticky pull on her shoe, lifted it up, and peered at the bloody sole. Her nose wrinkled again in distaste. Had this animal bled to death in her yard? She would have to throw these shoes away, and that was a waste of a perfectly good pair of tennis sneakers.

Her gaze was focused on her feet now, picking around the splashes of blood. Then something she didn’t recognize crept into her peripheral vision. Or rather, she did recognize it, but she didn’t really want to believe it was what it actually was.

Mrs. Schneider gasped, and raised her eyes, and when she saw what was there—what was everywhere, really—she dropped the handkerchief to her side and screamed and screamed and screamed.

4

Sofia Lopez clipped the top sheet to the line and then pushed the rope along so that she could attach the next one. There was nothing nicer, in her opinion, than bedsheets that had dried outside in the sunshine. She mopped her forehead with the inside of her arm. In this heat the whole load would be dried in no time.

“Mama?” Her older daughter, Valeria, stood at the screen door that led into the kitchen. “Can I have some marshmallows?”

Sofia squinted at Val. The girl was eleven years old and obsessed with chemical reactions, so there was plenty of reason to suspect that Val was not going to eat the marshmallows that she’d just requested. More than likely the final result would involve a sticky mess on the floor of her bedroom or a plume of smoke coming out the window.

“What are you going to do with them?” Sofia asked.

“Um,” Val said, the toe of her sock tracing a pattern on the floor. “Just, you know, some experiments.”

“Experiments,” Sofia said flatly. “Do these experiments involve fire?”

“Um,” Val said again.

From inside the house Sofia heard her other daughter, Camila, arguing with her cousin Daniel. They were both eight years old and always seemed to want the same thing at the same time.

“Go and see what the problem is this time,” Sofia said, turning back to her sheets.

“The marshmallows . . .” Val said.

“When I’m done you can tell me exactly what you want to do with them and then I will decide,” Sofia said.

Val sighed and went to separate her sister and cousin.

Sofia liked to encourage Val’s interest in science, but she didn’t like worrying that Val was going to burn the house down. She wished there was someplace she could send Val where she could safely perform whatever experiments she liked, preferably under the supervision of someone with a chemistry degree.

But there wasn’t anywhere like that in Smiths Hollow. In Chicago, maybe, but they’d moved here from Chicago so everyone could have a better life, and that meant that Valeria could observe chemical reactions outside in a backyard rather than in their cramped two-bedroom apartment in the city.

Despite what the Old Bigot across the street thought, neither Sofia nor her husband Alejandro nor Alejandro’s brother Eduardo nor his wife Beatriz had been born in Mexico. They were all U.S. citizens, born and bred, and their parents had immigrated legally.

And I’ll never tell her that, either. Let her think what she wants about us.

Alejandro had served for ten years in the Chicago Police Department, while Sofia and Eduardo and Beatriz had all worked at the Nabisco cookie factory on the southwest side. Eduardo and Beatriz and Daniel had lived across the hall from Sofia and Alejandro in the same apartment building in the Blue Island neighborhood, and they’d all taken different shifts so they could care for the children.

But all four of them always felt like they would never get ahead in the city, where rising costs made it difficult to even think about buying a house. Even with all seven of them living in this house in Smiths Hollow, they still had more room than any of them had ever had in Chicago. Just having separate bedrooms for Camila and Valeria had saved Sofia’s sanity, which had been on the verge of cracking if she heard one more argument about “her stuff is on my side of the room.”

Most of the neighbors were friendly and welcoming, and the Lopez families quickly found their place in their new home. Beatriz and Eduardo got better-paying jobs at the chili factory, and Alejandro had no trouble joining the tiny police force. Most days he was able to come home for lunch and he was never late for dinner because, as he put it, “There’s really nothing resembling crime in this town.” The dark circles that he’d always had under his eyes in Chicago from working shifts that never ended cleared up. And Sofia was able to stay home with all the children because her income was no longer vital.

There was the Old Bigot across the street, Sofia conceded, as she hung up the last of the sheets. Mrs. Schneider was always peering through her curtains at them like she thought Sofia couldn’t see her. Whenever the Old Bigot went to the end of her driveway to get the mail she’d glare at the Lopez house like she thought one of them had stolen her social security check.

When the screaming started Sofia at first thought that Daniel had hit Camila again. Even though he’d been told repeatedly that he wasn’t supposed to hit his cousin, their arguments usually seemed to devolve into smacking and punching if an adult wasn’t there to supervise them. Camila would hit back, too, but she was a pro at making it seem like Daniel was the only one at fault.

Her younger daughter was a born actress, and the slightest bump, bruise, or whack resulted in waterfalls of tears and the kind of melodramatic accusations that would be better suited to a Joan Crawford film—or rather, that movie about Joan Crawford, what was it called? There had been a lot of histrionics in that movie, and Camila seemed to be taking her cue from the same director. Sofia was immune to these performances, but Camila still managed to snow her father, who never believed that his little princess was exaggerating.

Sofia took one step toward the screen door, then stopped. The screaming wasn’t coming from inside the house but outside it. Had the kids gone out on the front lawn? Alejandro had left the sprinkler attached to the hose out there so they could play in the water on days like today, but Sofia hadn’t heard any of them turn on the faucet on the side of the house.

Val came to the back door, eyes round, and Camila and Daniel crowded behind her. “What’s that?”

Sofia shook her head. “I thought it was you kids.”

As soon as she said it, she realized it was an idiotic thing to say. The noise wasn’t anything like the sounds the kids made, short bursts of raucous joy or just as raucous arguing. This scream was a long sustained thing, almost impossible in its breadth and length. How could one person scream for so long and never take a breath?

“Stay here,” Sofia said.

Camila immediately tried to push past Val to follow her mother—Camila had a nosy streak a mile wide—but Val snagged her around the waist before she could escape.

“Hey!” Camila said, and kicked her sister in the shin with the heel of her shoe.

“Ow!” Val shouted, dropping Camila to the ground.

Camila collapsed and immediately started howling like her ankle had broken upon landing.

“Enough,” Sofia said, slashing her hand through the air. Her mother’s tone was firm enough that Camila ceased the fake crying immediately and stared up at her in astonishment. “All of you will stay right here while I see what’s happening, and you will not put a toe outside unless you want to lose all your privileges for the rest of the summer.”

“Yes, Mama,” Val said.

“Yes, Mama,” Camila repeated.

“Yes, Aunt Sofia,” Daniel added.

“I will be back,” she said. “If I’m gone more than fifteen minutes, call Papa at the police station.”

Val glanced over her shoulder at the clock, starting the countdown from that moment.

Sofia knew the children would be fine—if anything, the younger two would forget where she’d gone in a few minutes and resume their normal activities.

She went around the left side of the house and down the driveway. The Lopez home didn’t have a garage, just an open strip of blacktop that ran alongside the front yard and then the house and stopped once it reached the back porch. Alejandro and Eduardo had already discussed putting up some kind of cover for the cars, even if it was just a canopy roof. The summer heat beating inside the cars made them unbearable.

Sofia stopped when she reached the mailbox at the end of the drive, trying to pinpoint the location of the screams. Their house was in a little cul-de-sac, and sometimes sound echoed strangely through the space.

None of the other neighbors appeared to be home—or if they were, they were singularly incurious about the source of the noise. Sofia was the only person standing out in the street, perspiration beading on her forehead.

“Is that the Old Bigot?” she murmured to herself. She started across the street, the heat making the soles of her sneakers feel sticky.

Halfway there she was sure it was, in fact, Mrs. Schneider. What could have the old woman in such a state? Sofia felt vaguely annoyed that she had to ride to the rescue of a person who held her and her entire family in contempt. She knew that Jesus said to forgive, but it was hard to feel the warmth of Christian love toward the woman.

Still, Sofia knew that she wouldn’t leave Mrs. Schneider in such obvious distress, even if part of her would like to do just that. She was fairly certain the Old Bigot wouldn’t spit on her if she were on fire.

Once she was standing on Mrs. Schneider’s front lawn it was apparent that the screaming was coming from the backyard. The screams hadn’t diminished in volume or length, although Sofia thought the old woman’s voice was getting hoarse. As she unhooked the gate to the backyard Sofia felt the first stirrings of alarm. This wasn’t just some wild hair of the old lady’s. Something was really wrong.

The gate clattered shut behind Sofia. Mrs. Schneider stood on the downslope of her yard, close to the edge of the woods that abutted the neatly trimmed grass. The old woman was ramrod straight, her hands down at her sides. Her purse had fallen at her feet and a white handkerchief fluttered weakly in the grass, like a halfhearted surrender.

“Mrs. Schneider?” Sofia called, approaching her.

Mrs. Schneider stopped screaming then, all of a sudden, like she was a tap that someone had switched off. She spun around, saw Sofia standing there, and then raised one stiff arm toward the bottom of the yard.

“Look!” she shouted. “Look what you’ve done. This neighborhood used to be safe before your kind came here! Look! Look!”

Sofia felt her temper shoot up into the stratosphere. She had always been quick to anger, something she hated because she felt it just played into people’s prejudices about hot-blooded Latinas.

“What are you talking about, you old . . .” Sofia said. She’d been about to say you old bitch, because that was exactly what Mrs. Schneider was, a hateful old bitch, but then the smell finally permeated her anger and she staggered. “What on earth?”

She covered her mouth and nose with her hand, but that just seemed to hold the smell closer and she coughed, gagging a little.

“Do you see? Do you SEE?” Mrs. Schneider said, shaking her head with all the righteous fury of a tent revivalist. “This is what happens when people don’t stay in their place! I knew your house was full of thieves and murderers.”

Sofia wasn’t really listening anymore, because she’d seen the thing that Mrs. Schneider was pointing at, the thing that was choking her with its smell, and the bottom fell out of her stomach.

Blood. There was so much blood, and other things that were barely recognizable but had certainly come from a human. By the looks of it, two humans.

“I need to use your telephone,” she said, and her voice sounded like it came from a faraway place. “I have to call Alejandro.”

Yes, she needed to call Alejandro, and he would bring the police car and the ambulance and he would know what to do about all this.

Sofia turned her back on the mad old woman and her accusing finger and walked toward the back porch. She felt like she was swimming underwater, like the steps of the porch were miles from where she stood.

“Don’t you dare sully my house!” Mrs. Schneider shouted. “Don’t you put one of your dirty Mexican feet on the porch my husband built!”

Sofia ignored her. She needed a telephone, and there would be a closer telephone in Mrs. Schneider’s house. Besides, she didn’t want to call from home. She was going to have to explain why the police needed to come immediately and she’d rather the children not overhear.

She was opening the storm door when Mrs. Schneider charged across the lawn toward her.

“Get away from there!” the old woman shouted. “You get away right now!”

Sofia let go of the storm door and turned to face the livid Mrs. Schneider, who’d come up one of the steps and reached for the hem of Sofia’s shorts, as if she were going to pull Sofia off the porch.

Somewhere underneath the shock and the underwater feeling, Sofia’s anger still bubbled. She’d come over here to help this screaming woman, and the old bitch was only worried about her house being “sullied.”

Sofia slapped the old woman across the face as hard as she possibly could. The impact seemed to echo in the air between them, a seismic reverberation.

“I am going to call the police,” she said in a tone that she usually reserved for the children, and then only when they were on the thinnest possible ice. “I am going to use your telephone to do this. You will not shout, scream, or impede me in any way while I do this.”

Mrs. Schneider nodded, chastened. Her eyes dropped in the direction of Sofia’s off-brand tennis sneakers.

“The telephone is just inside the door,” she said. “I think I’ll . . . just wait here.”

She turned her back to Sofia and lowered herself slowly to the wooden steps of the porch. She seemed very old to Sofia then, at least ten years older than she’d been a few minutes earlier.

As Sofia entered the house she heard Mrs. Schneider begin to sob.

The phone hung just to the right of the back door as advertised. Sofia lifted the receiver and dialed Alejandro’s desk phone instead of 911. She didn’t want to talk to a dispatcher. She wanted to talk to her husband. She wanted him to come to her right away.

“Officer Lopez,” he said.

“Alejandro,” she said, and she was surprised to hear her voice crack. “Alejandro, you have to come. There are girls.”

“Sof?” he asked. “What’s the matter? Did something happen to Val or Camila?”

“No,” she said, taking a deep breath. “It’s not our girls. It’s somebody else’s girls. There are two of them, and someone left them in pieces all over Mrs. Schneider’s yard.”

5

Lauren saw her mother and brother come out of Frank’s deli and walk toward the Sweet Shoppe. She wrinkled her nose a little and turned her head away, even though there was little to no chance of her mother seeing her through the window in the dim interior of the arcade.

She stood next to Miranda, who was standing very close to Tad, the greasy-haired (and also greasy-faced, Lauren thought) object of her affection who did not look at all like Matt Dillon.

On the other side of Tad was his friend Billy, who also did not look like Matt Dillon and who seemed to have about as much interest in Lauren as she did in him—that is, none at all.

Tad was very involved with his latest round of Karate Champ and they were all supposed to care just as much as he did. Lauren didn’t see why they couldn’t all at least go and play their own games as long as they were in the arcade, but Tad liked to have a cheering section around him.

Billy would shout and clap when Tad got a good hit on his opponent, and he apparently understood that as his role. Maybe cheerleading Tad’s skill at the joystick was required if you were permitted to ride in Tad’s Camaro. Miranda had pointed at the car out front as they entered the arcade, and the only thing Lauren noticed about it was that Tad hadn’t bothered to put it in between the diagonal parking space lines.

She didn’t think Miranda was interested in the outcome of the latest match. Her friend did seem to enjoy brushing her breasts against Tad’s arm as he played the game, though, and Tad didn’t tell her to get off so he must have been enjoying it, too.

What would happen if I just left without saying anything? Lauren wondered. Would Miranda notice right away, or only when she wanted to drag Lauren to the bathroom to touch up her lip gloss and talk about Tad?

She’d just about resolved to do it—slip away without telling Miranda—when the howl of an ambulance siren made everyone crane around their video screens and look out the window. The ambulance flew down Main Street, a notable occurrence by itself in a town with few emergencies, but the fact that it was followed by both of the Smiths Hollow Police Department cars had everyone muttering.

“Whoa, wonder what’s happening,” Billy said.

“We should follow the police cars,” Tad said, and looked ready to abandon his game and run outside to jump into his car.

Lauren knew that if that happened, Miranda would want to follow, and she decided right then that she wasn’t going to go with them. She was not going to get herself trapped in Tad’s car and then wind up someplace she really did not want to be, like the mall in the next town or at the Make-Out Field. The way that Miranda was rubbing herself against Tad meant the Make-Out Field was a distinct possibility, and Lauren planned on escaping before anyone expected her to kiss Billy.

“They’re long gone, man,” Billy said. “We’ll never catch them.”

“The Camaro could,” Tad said belligerently, as if Billy had somehow questioned the masculinity of his car.

“Sure,” Billy said. “But if you chase the cops at that speed you’ll end up getting a ticket.”

Tad’s shoulders relaxed. “Yeah. And if I get another ticket the Mother Monster said she’s going to take away my car keys.”

Miranda trilled a long laugh at this. “Mother Monster. That’s a good one.”

“She’s always ragging me,” Tad said, and his voice became high-pitched. “‘Clean up your room, cut your hair, work more hours at your job.’ Jesus Christ, it’s summer. Can’t she lay off for five seconds?”

“Yeah,” Miranda said. “You already work a lot at Wagon Wheel.”

“Not that much,” Tad admitted, sliding another quarter into Karate Champ. “I was thinking of applying at someplace in the mall.”

Lauren felt a headache coming on. It was brewing behind her eyes and soon it would clobber her there, making her feel nauseated and dizzy as it pounded the back of her eyeballs. She’d been subject to these headaches occasionally as a child, but lately they’d become more frequent. If she didn’t get home soon she wouldn’t even be able to ride her bike without falling over.

She started to say something to Miranda, who was deeply involved in the discussion of Tad’s future employment prospects.

“What?” Miranda asked, flashing Lauren an annoyed glance.