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Authors: Lisa McMann

Cryer's Cross (17 page)

BOOK: Cryer's Cross
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His voice sounds far away, and the voice of the desk doesn’t leave her. Everything in her brain is mud. “Don’t let them bury me,” she says.

“Oh, Kendall.” His voice breaks. “Did somebody do this to you? Did anyone touch you?”

She shakes her head. “No. It’s just the voices. They made me . . . do things. . . .” She lets a sob escape, and then explodes into a racking cough.

“Voices? You mean . . . ,” he says slowly, “you heard something, when you touched the desk?”

“Yes, the voices.” Kendall grips her throat as it burns.

“Shh . . . You can explain once we get you to the hospital.”

They reach Hector’s ranch, and Jacián pulls the quad up next to the barn. He carries Kendall to his truck, starts
it up to get the heat flowing, and then picks up the barn phone to make a quick call to Kendall’s parents.

“I’ve got her. She’s alive. I’m taking her to Bozeman Hospital. It’s faster than waiting on an ambulance. Is that okay? . . . Good. She’s talking, but she’s been out in the rain all night and day.”

He listens for a moment and then says, “See you there.”

He rushes into the truck and takes off down the road, the heater on full blast. He slides Kendall over to him and cradles his arm around her. Halfway to Bozeman she’s shivering. Jacián says that’s a good sign.

He pulls up to the emergency room and carries her inside, grabbing an empty wheelchair and the first person in scrubs that he sees. “Hey, man, she’s freezing. Soaking wet,” he says, setting Kendall down in the wheelchair. The orderly hesitates, glances at the waiting room and then at Kendall’s blue lips, and takes her away. Someone at the desk hands Jacián a clipboard with forms on it. He stares at it blankly. Carries it to the entrance to meet Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher. Tells them everything he knows as they fill out the paperwork.

For a moment Jacián just stands there looking down the long, bustling hallway, thinking, catching his breath before it all catches up to him. And then he turns and goes out to park the truck.

And to get a grip on things before he loses it.

TWENTY-SEVEN

It’s pneumonia, probably some dirt inhaled into her lungs, and the cold rain didn’t help. Kendall spends the first day with a high fever, in and out of consciousness. Not caring what is happening, only mourning around the edges of reality. Her best friend in all the world, the boy who knew her best, the guy who wanted to be a nurse so he could help people feel better, is dead. And he died in a horrible way.

Part of her knew he had to be dead. When Eli said it at the Obregons’ party, she believed he was probably right. But the desk . . . his voice. It’s still killing her.

When she wakes up, her mother is there, reading by the bed, her half-glasses near the tip of her nose. There’s another bed in the room, but it’s empty.

“Hey, Mom,” Kendall says in a gravelly voice, and cringes. There are oxygen tubes in her nostrils, and her throat is raw, burning. An IV is attached to one arm, and stitches poke from the other where the clippers stabbed her. Her legs and arms, even her stomach is covered with scratches and bruises.

Mrs. Fletcher sits up quickly, puts her book on the table, and a smile spreads across her face. “Kendall,” she says. “How’s my girl?”

Kendall points to her throat and makes a sad face.

Mrs. Fletcher reaches for a glass of water and feeds the straw into Kendall’s mouth.

Kendall sucks on the straw, feeling the cool water soothe her throat.

“Do you want a pen and some paper?” Mrs. Fletcher rummages through her purse.

Kendall doesn’t have any energy to write, but then she nods anyway. Why not? Turns out she has a few burning questions, once she’s fully awake.

“Nico died,” she writes.

Mrs. Fletcher presses her fingers to her lips as she thinks about how to say things. “They’re both . . . dead. Did you know that?”

Kendall nods. Tears well up in her eyes. She knew it, but hearing her mother say it out loud makes it feel true.

“They’re exhuming the bodies for autopsy. The Quinns
and the Cruzes are going to have proper burials and a memorial service in the cemetery behind the church in a few days. And now everybody’s trying to find out who murdered them, who buried them there. And why. Honey,” Mrs. Fletcher says in earnest, her voice filled with worry and dread, “do you remember who did this to you? How did you . . . he . . .” She can’t say it. “The police are going to talk to you again.” Her voice breaks, and she grabs a tissue.

Kendall isn’t sure what to say. She writes on her notepad, “I don’t really remember anything.” She doesn’t like lying, but if she tells the truth, she knows they’ll put her away.

Mrs. Fletcher reaches down and hugs Kendall tightly. “It’s okay, baby. Just tell the police what you remember and that’s all you have to do.”

Kendall nods.

When Sheriff Greenwood comes, he brings a small entourage with him—old Mr. Greenwood and Hector Morales, who stand outside the door to her room, not looking in.

“I brought you some visitors if you’re up for it,” the sheriff says to Kendall.

Kendall nods.

“Mrs. Fletcher, can I speak to you in private?”

“Of course.” Mrs. Fletcher gives Kendall’s knee a comforting squeeze through the blankets. Then she follows the sheriff.

When the two go off to the waiting room to talk, Hector and old Mr. Greenwood enter Kendall’s room. It’s weird to have them here.

“Miss Kendall,” Hector says. He holds his cowboy hat in hand. “I’m so sorry for your pain.”

Kendall nods, saving her voice.

“How are you?”

She shrugs. Whispers, “Okay.”

“This seems strange, doesn’t it? But we are here for good reason. I need to tell you a story about one of my friends.”

Puzzled, Kendall just looks at them, from one face to the other, wondering what’s up. She nods and points at the chairs, inviting them to sit.

Once settled, Hector glances tentatively at old Mr. Greenwood, who sits down in the other bedside chair. He presses his lips together in a white line and stares at the floor.

Hector weaves his fingers together in his lap and gazes into his cupped hands as if he’s searching for the right words to spill forth. And then, after a few false starts, he tells a story from a long time ago. A story about a boy named Piere who was sent to live at the Cryer’s Reform School for Delinquent Boys.

He tells about the poor conditions there, and the terrible treatment the boys received, how one night this boy Piere had to sleep on his stomach because his back was in
shreds, oozing with blood and pus from being whipped by the headmaster. How Piere’s best friend, Samuel, was sent for a whipping the next night, and Piere snuck out to the little white shack to watch through the crack in the door, knowing that if he were caught, he’d be punished again. But not caring. He needed to be there for his friend.

Piere watched the headmaster, Horace Cryer, bring down the whip again and again on Samuel’s back and thighs as the boy braced himself, back arched, over the whipping desk. He watched Samuel’s welts grow and turn grayish purple, the blood just under the skin, and then exploding red on the next hit when the skin broke, the blood spraying through the air, all over the walls.

Piere counted, knowing there were only two kinds of beatings from Mr. Cryer. Thirty-five lashes for minor disobedience. One hundred for everything else . . . and sometimes for no reason at all.

When Mr. Cryer didn’t stop at thirty-five, Piere’s stomach clenched. After several more lashes, the silent Samuel let out a bloodcurdling scream, which only drove Mr. Cryer to bring the whip down harder. Piere watched as Samuel’s elbows slipped off the desk, his chest and cheek smashing against it, beads of blood on his lower lip. He watched his friend’s eyes roll back and close.

Piere clutched his shirt in agony, tearing his own oozing sores open again, and then he stumbled blindly away, back to his bunk.

He never saw Samuel again.

Hector looks up at Kendall. She’s gripping the bed sheets, staring at him. The eerie numbers, thirty-five and one hundred. The whipping desk . . . She tries to say something, chokes, drinks some water and tries again. “That’s a horrible story,” she says. “Is it true?”

Hector nods. “Yes. I am sorry I had to tell it.”

“Is that place . . . is that where I was?”

“Yes.”

She bites her lip, thinking about Samuel. “You talked about a desk.”

Hector’s eyes glisten. His face screws up in anger, remorse. He nods. “The whipping desk. All the desks in your classroom came from the reform school. The state brought them over when they opened your school.”

Kendall just stares.

“And when Jacián told me what you said when he found you . . . I am not superstitious,” he says, shaking his finger, “but I knew they should have left it there to rot. There was evil there in that place, on those grounds. Evil in the heart of Horace Cryer.”

Old Mr. Greenwood sits stone-faced, listening like he
can hardly bear to hear it, denying nothing.

“Mr. Cryer beat us all multiple times over that desk,” Hector says. “Many of our friends were murdered by him. We didn’t know what he did with the bodies. We weren’t allowed beyond the gate. But now we know . . . now we know. There are so many crosses.”

Hector pulls a handkerchief from his coat pocket and mops his face with it, grieving all over again. “You have to understand, we had no one. All of us either orphans or abandoned as hopeless delinquents, like me. Who would listen to us? We never talked about it, never told anyone. We only wanted to forget.” He dabs the corners of his eyes. “Make new lives once we got out.”

Kendall remains silently horrified as she tries to comprehend. The souls of the dead boys . . . beaten into the desk? Trapped there, angry, their business undone . . . stuck away in storage all these years, only to be set free whenever they found a body to go into? It was impossible. No one would believe it. Yet here she was, with two of the most respected people of Cryer’s Cross, and neither was denying it.

“We know about the voice,” old Mr. Greenwood says abruptly, surprising everyone. Then he glances at Kendall, measuring her. “If you repeat this, I will deny it. But I have heard the whisper too.”

Kendall’s eyes spring open wide. “You have?”

He nods and looks back at the floor, as if he can’t look her in the eye. “I didn’t know where it came from. Didn’t pay attention to that desk in particular as I shoved the desks around.” He wipes his eyes with his hand. “Thirty-five, one hundred, buzzing around my ears, those numbers taunting me. I thought it was me. I thought I was going senile. Post-traumatic stress or something. The voice sounded like . . . like Samuel.”

“It said things to me in Nico’s voice,” Kendall whispers. “Tiffany and Nico both sat at that desk.”

“Yes, Jacián told me. We’ve pieced it together,” Hector says. “He said he heard whispers when he touched it too.” Hector looks up, out the open door to the empty hallway. “The sheriff will be coming back soon. He knows of our hunch about the desk, but he doesn’t know what to believe, doesn’t want to commit to a story so unnatural. I don’t blame him—two old coots like us with a crazy hunch. But we’re going to remove that desk. Not to worry.”

Kendall nods. “Thank you.” She is flooded with relief, so glad she is no longer alone in this.

“He’s going to ask you what you remember. It’s up to you what you want to say when he asks you questions. But as far as the people of Cryer’s Cross and the national news networks know, we’re all now looking for an elusive kidnapper and murderer.” He pauses, and his voice softens. “Maybe it’s best, for your sake, if it stays that way.”

Kendall sinks back into the pillows, feeling a little light-headed.

When the sheriff comes in with Mrs. Fletcher, Hector smiles at Kendall and squeezes her hand.

“Thank you for visiting, gentlemen,” Mrs. Fletcher says to the men. “It means a lot that you came to see her.”

Hector tips his hat. “Miss Kendall is a special girl, a good friend to me and my grandchildren,” he says, old eyes shining. “She is like family.” He gets to his feet, and old Mr. Greenwood moves to do the same. Hector looks at him and holds out a hand. “Ready?”

“I don’t need your help,” Old Mr. Greenwood grumbles.

TWENTY-EIGHT

She told the sheriff that she didn’t remember anything, only that she felt like she’d been drugged, not in control of her actions. Tests couldn’t confirm any drugs in her body, but the reporters got anonymously tipped off nonetheless.

She sits in the hospital still, three days later, the small stream of visitors having dissipated. The local TV news is on, and Kendall is watching people arrive for the burial service for Nico and Tiffany. It’s a big deal for southwest Montana. It’d be a big deal anywhere. Maybe seventy or eighty strangers mill around the grave site, those oddities who’d gotten sucked in by the story and feel, in some unexplainable way, connected to the two missing teens. It’s weird to see them. But even weirder to see people
she knows and sees every day, standing so solemnly, all dressed up. She sees Nico’s and Tiffany’s extended families up front, the camera invading their grief.

She sees her own parents, looking older than what she thinks them to be. She sees the Greenwoods and the Shanks arriving with some of the other people of Cryer’s Cross, and she’s struck by how horribly often the little town has had to gather all at once like this over the past five months, stopping everything for another tragedy, then trudging onward with life.

The caskets hang suspended over the graves in plot sections that have no patriarchs, no matriarchs. Teenagers aren’t supposed to die. Kendall pulls an extra pillow to her chest and hugs it, wondering why on earth she convinced her mother to go to the memorial and leave her here alone during this.

She sees Hector and the Obregons. Marlena in a black dress, Jacián in a dark suit with a white shirt, no tie. They find seats, and Jacián jiggles his foot up and down as they wait for it to begin. And finally it does.

A few minutes into it, the TV news anchor cuts in and brings breaking news of something else, a fire downtown or something, and the service is gone. Kendall turns off the TV and stares at the ceiling, remembering Nico in her own private way. His smile, the light in his eyes. How he’d do anything for her, and she for him.

BOOK: Cryer's Cross
5.84Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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