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I reached the wagon and hauled myself up to see inside the bed, and then I lifted the tarp.
She was dead, and I thought I was about to give myself away by screaming, but somehow I managed to keep quiet. I almost fell off the wagon, though, I was so stunned.
But I didn’t. I had to see more of her. I was both repelled and fascinated, as if I were caught in a terrible dream.
Her name was Susan Madison, and she was so beautiful—had been so beautiful. Her face was unmarred. In the moonlight, it looked as if she were a porcelain doll. But then I saw her throat. It was nearly nonexistent, and I thought instantly that there should be blood, with such a gaping hole. It looked almost as if an animal had ripped out her throat. And yet the face…
It was so perfect. White. Eerily white. A doll’s face. She was a doll, beautiful—and empty.
I pulled the tarp farther back. And I saw what had been done to her.
I did fall from the wagon then, but somehow I kept myself from screaming, afraid that if they knew what I had seen, the same thing would happen to me.
Not only was her throat a red horror, but she was covered in dirt, as if she had come out of the ground. I could only think that her face was so perfect and white only because the sergeant had cleaned her up in an attempt to discern her identity. But it was more than the filthy condition of the body that was so disturbing. She looked…gnawed, as if consumed by wild beasts. She had no fingers on one hand, and a chunk of her midriff was entirely gone. Her legs had been worked upon as if they were turkey drumsticks.
I managed to get myself up. And still I never let loose the scream that seemed to echo in my mind, terrified and shrill.
I lived in a mortuary. I had seen dead bodies before.
But never—never—anything like this.
I heard the door opening, and ran to hide in the bushes by the side of the house, my heart thundering. I was terrified.
I couldn’t help feeling that I was in danger of ending up like that poor girl.
My father was still complaining to the sergeant for bringing the body to him.
“You can make her look beautiful. She deserves a proper funeral, and her family deserves to be able to mourn her. ”
“Sergeant Lee, you’re mad! Why did you bring her here? Why didn’t you leave her where you found her?” my father protested. “Better she had stayed in the dirt, stayed missing! What if someone insists on digging her up again? What if they discover our deception?”
“I chose not to leave her because—someone else would have discovered her. Stop worrying. No one will question her death. Doctor Howard, the old souse, has already signed a death certificate. She was struck by a carriage and left by the road. Don’t you understand me? Her death must be seen as a tragic accident. The work of a coward who left a girl dead in the streets, rather than admit he had struck her. If the truth were to come out, the city would erupt. There would be slaughter of an entirely different kind if the populace were to discover that there is a killer in our midst—and we have not the slightest idea of who he is or what sickness drives him to his atrocities. You will do this, and you will do it right, or I will see to it that you are run out of this town. Get that witch of a housekeeper of yours to mix up a few potions so that she looks good. Start tonight. I must go and inform this poor girl’s family. ”
My father was angry; furious. But Sergeant Lee was a powerful man. Watching them together, I felt ill. It was as if they knew things about each other that created a strange bond between them. They weren’t friends, but there was a connection binding them. I waited in silence as they picked up the body, still wrapped in the tarp, and carried it to the back door. Still I didn’t move. I didn’t dare.
I stayed in the bushes.
I stayed there for a very long time.
At last, having no true concept of how much time had gone by, I slipped back into the house, only to find that she was there. Martha Tyler.
Martha always wore a bandana wrapped around her head as if it were a crown and she some kind of queen. One drop of African blood made a man or woman a slave, and Martha could have been a slave. But she wasn’t, even though she came to us from the South and made no complaint when we brought her back there. I think she had been a slave, though, that she killed her master and escaped. But perhaps I only think that because I hate her. The girls in town who giggle and come to her for love potions don’t know her the way I know her. They don’t see her when she sits in front of a mirror, looking at her reflection. They don’t hear her voice when she speaks to me, disdaining me.
They have never seen anything like the malicious evil in her eyes when I entered the house that night.
“Ah, little girl, little girl. Poor little ugly girl. ” She came to me and took me by the ear, hurting me, but when I would have cried out, she brought a finger to her lips. “Shh,” she warned me, but she didn’t let go. “Where have you been, little girl? You should not be nosy. Such bad things can happen to nosy little girls. There are panthers out there. And bears and alligators and snakes. Predators that own the night. They love to feed upon little girls, for no meat is so sweet as girl-flesh. ”
“Let me go,” I pleaded, but I didn’t cry out for my father. I knew he wouldn’t have helped me. He had never loved me, because I wasn’t a beautiful child.
He would have helped her feed me to the creatures of the night, the snakes and alligators and panthers.
She released me, laughing. “You had better forget all that you’ve seen and heard, or else…” She made a hissing sound through her teeth and slashed a line across her throat with her finger. “Nosy little girls go to feed the creatures in the woods, and in the end, they are consumed by the worms. ”
I raced past her, terrified.
I prayed for the day that she and my father might die. I knew I would go to hell for such a cruel thought, but I could not help it.
For I would prefer hell to this evil house, and the company of my father and Martha Tyler.
“That poor girl,” Sarah found herself saying aloud. She quickly turned the page, but it was blank. Mystified, she kept looking through the journal.
The girl had never written in it again.
She stood up, stretching. Every muscle in her body hurt; without even noticing, she had huddled into a tight, defensive ball while reading. She didn’t feel the chill anymore, though. Instead she felt angry that a father could be so cruel to his daughter and allow his housekeeper to be even worse. And yet, if perhaps that father had been a serial killer, as the historical record seemed to imply, perhaps she had been lucky simply to have survived.
And yet, had she survived? Those blank pages might be telling.
Vicky came into the room. “Well?”
“Fascinating—and awful. I think you have to read this yourself. It looks like there was a serial killer in the city during the Civil War. ”
“So the local hero was a killer?” Vicky asked. “Cato MacTavish was a war hero, but his fiancée did disappear mysteriously, and he was the last person known to have seen her. And there were other girls who went missing, too. In fact, there were rumors about Cato at the time, so it’s no wonder he left town when he did. ”
“I don’t think Cato MacTavish was the killer,” Sarah told Vicky. “The timeline doesn’t make sense, because girls kept disappearing while he was away fighting, and after he abandoned the house and disappeared. Oh, people said he was still around. But what—living in trees? You have to read the journal. Brennan’s daughter says some pretty wild stuff about her father and a Sergeant Lee who was sheriff here during the war. ”
“Maybe you could do an article on it, Sarah. You have a master’s in history, and you own the house the Brennans owned back then. ”
“Good idea. The whole thing is terrifying but fascinating. ”
“Cool,” Vicky said, reaching for the journal. “Sorry, but I have to lock up now. ”
“No problem. Thanks, Vicky. ”
She had intended to head straight for Hunky Harry’s when she finished at the library, but for some reason she found herself walking home first and staring up at her house.
So little had changed. The bushes where Nellie Brennan had hidden were still there. The driveway was much as it would have been all those years ago.
And that driveway was empty now, which meant no one was inside. It was just after five, though, so that didn’t mean everyone was done and she could get started on her renovations again. She hesitated, then let herself into the carriage house and called Tim Jamison, as she’d promised Gary she would.
When he picked up, Tim sounded distracted. The police and M. E. were finished, he said, and there was no evidence of any more bodies, but she needed to call the professor from the university to make sure he was done, too. He gave her a number.
She called Dr. Manning, who was friendly and appreciative, expressing his gratitude that she had let the university handle the find. He assured her that they were currently looking into all the documents in the university collection, trying to solve the riddle of who had been responsible for walling up the bodies. As far as he was concerned, her house was her own again, though he hoped to stay in touch as more information came to light.
She agreed to meet him the following week for lunch, and assured him that the university was more than welcome to come back.
After she got off the phone, she went and stood staring up at the front of her house again.
Houses weren’t evil.
Determinedly, she walked up to the porch, then let herself in. It was her house.
Her dream house.
Inside, she started turning on lights; it wasn’t dark yet, but it was late enough in the afternoon that heavy shadows were starting to fill the place. She decided that she would call Gary Morton in the morning and get him to come back in and resume working. She could get her plans back on track.
She walked through the house and saw that, once again, everything had been left ship-shape. Except, of course, for the gaping hole in the wall. But that was all right. Dry wall was easy. Okay, not for her, maybe, but for Gary, dry wall was a piece of cake.