The May Queen Murders (26 page)

“Why the hell would they meet in the woods, of all places?” I

asked Rook. “Heather knew it was off-limits. She liked danger, but

he must’ve done some convincing or — Rook?”

He was distracted by the fence, examining the vine weaving the

metal grid. His fingers nudged some dried blue-black berries from

last fall still clinging to the vine. The fence was a wall of green as far

as I could see.

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“What’s this?” I asked.

“Bel adonna,” he replied, looking up. “An awful lot of it.”

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I held the kitten on the exam table in the clinic while Papa changed

the cotton around her paw. I’d found the green-eyed, ginger kitten on

the doorstep after school yesterday. At first, Mama tried to stop me

from checking on the sound, convinced it was a devil’s trick. The sky

was blood, shadows unpredictable and filled with story. But it’d be a

sin to leave her outside, Papa had told Mama as he lay on the floor

with the kitten and dangled a string for her paws to bat.

He took her to the clinic with him while I was at school. We

named her Wednesday.

Papa put away his stethoscope. “You still drinking Mamie’s tea?”

“Mama won’t let me miss a dose,” I replied. My hands rubbed the

kitten’s back, letting her tail circle my wrist. She was so pretty, so red

and affectionate.

“Sleep-Away-Sorrow works right wel . Mamie only brews it up

when your head’s better off sedated while working out what hell it’s

seen.” Papa scrunched his nose. “Too much anise for my taste.”

“You’ve drunk that tea?”

“Indeed.”

“When Gramps died?”

“Long time before that,” he said.

I placed Wednesday in the nest I’d made behind the counter

where Heather used to sit so many days after school. Not many ani-

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mals coming to the clinic. No hil folk would risk taking out their

pets.

My fingers drummed the counter. “Wh-why’s Sheriff promised to

keep me safe?”

Papa dropped a cleaning cloth in a bucket of vinegar water. “’Cause

he’s a lawman, and that’s what they do.”

“He says he owes you. What happened? What made you go on

that missionary trip? Nobody else ’round here does them, and it ain’t

like you’re that prayerful a man.”

“Ivy!”

“Y-you can’t tell me you left only to go to vet school. That’s at Miz-

zou — but you went to Mexico. Why? If you hated being here in the

Glen, why’d you come back?”

His mouth tightened, eyes steely behind his glasses. “I left ’cause

the future I planned wasn’t gonna happen. I came back ’cause I for-

gave. Sometimes all you can do is forgive and hope folks learn from

the past.”

“Did they?” I asked.

“Your cousin’s dead, so no, they didn’t.”

For the next hour, Papa remained in his office. I was alone but

not. It was impossible not to feel Heather. I reached for the thermos

under the counter and poured more tea. My mind was overaware,

and I didn’t want that. I wanted Sleep-Away-Sorrow’s warm-bath

sensation, of sliding down into a pool of nothingness.
Drink it fast,

make it hit harder.
No memories of Heather’s lipless grin and her

neck bones cracking. No more recollection of her teeth clacking to-

gether to shape words.

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Find it, Ivy.

I swallowed the last dregs and withdrew my sketchbook. The

drawings weren’t mine anymore. I couldn’t recall penning the imag-

es: torn dresses with darkness leaking from wounds, horses without

manes, and boy hands on curved hips. If anyone saw what resided in

my book, they’d think I’d gone mad.

I felt closer to death than life.

I reached under the counter to retrieve my pencil sharpener. My

hand snagged on a hole inside, one that opened up through the un-

derside of the countertop. I shouldn’t have thought much of it — car-

penter ants, mice — any pesky critter could’ve chewed through the

wood. Yet I was half asleep, and the hole was magical. I stuck my

finger inside.

A folded paper fluttered out.

It was marked with uneven lines in my cousin’s hand. Words like

mounds,
shrubs,
marsh,
river.
It was a rudimentary map of someplace deep in the woods. Where it led, I had no idea, but wherever it was,

Heather had kept it secret, with a cryptic sentence amid her descrip-

tion of the grounds.

Be afraid of what’s right in front of you.

I’d been afraid. I was still afraid. Except I didn’t know what to fear

anymore.

My head lay on the desk, paper against my cheek. The pencil

rolled and poked me in the lip while my eyelids became curtains to

blacken my world. My pencil traced my profile, and some part of me

knew when I slipped off the page my hand kept working, though I

didn’t dare see what hauntings in my head came out . . .

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Teeth. Human and animal mixed together in the same mouth. The

mouth hovered close to my forehead, breath reeking of honey, boy

sweat, and coagulated blood. Vultures would come soon. The stench

would draw them.

I pushed back the shape, but I had no hands, only stumps where

glossy, scarlet pools thumped against the dog heads tied together on

the shape’s chest. There was no place to run, too many trees behind me,

and from somewhere else, water trickled close by. I prayed it was water.

“Shhh,” the shape said and pressed fingers to my lips.

The skin was cold.

Because it was mine.

The shape held my dead hand to my lips.

“Shhh,” Birch Markle repeated. “All secrets you keep are someone

else’s lies.”

Shrieks tore from me until my vocal cords bled in my throat then I

kept screaming . . .

“Ivy!” Papa shook me. His hands enveloped my cheeks. “Ivy, wake

up!”

One more scream jerked from my mouth, and Papa tugged me

against his shoulder. I flexed my fingers. They were stiff and frigid,

but they bent and moved. Alive.

“The nightmares will stop,” Papa promised, still hugging me.

“How are you so sure?” I asked.

“Mine did.”

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Dark was coming.

Already the torches were lit when we left the clinic at dusk. I held

Wednesday close to me and glanced westward to the sunset. The last

vestiges of violet dissolved in the sky.

We stayed in the middle of the road, avoiding the ruts from wagon

wheels. My hair fell over my face, the only sounds the
swish-swish
of

my skirt and muffled steps of Papa’s boots.

“You asked why I drank Mamie’s tea,” he said. “I lost someone.”

I hesitated. The risk was worth knowing.

“Terra?”

Papa’s mouth flexed.

“I heard you and Mama,” I said.

He stopped along the fence. Nothing around us except dried

fields and the bowing heads of scarecrows. His fingers traced the

aged wood, tapping it. “Terra and I grew up together. Her family, the

MacAvoys, grew pumpkins. Scores of ’em, like you had a pocketful

of orange marbles that you decided to toss in the field one day. Terra

was gonna become a vet. My God, she loved animals. Cats, dogs,

birds, every critter came to her. Jay’s daddy, Jackdaw, was sheriff and

got after her for keepin’ so many animals.”

The smile on Papa’s face, he gave that look to Mama, tenderness

and thought. Then his smile faded. Sorrow recognized itself, I be-

lieved, and my sorrow saw itself in my father. I joined him by the

fence, enveloped by the torches’ glow.

“You loved her,” I declared.

My father lowered his head and walked on. I joined him, waiting

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for him to admit what he’d hidden my entire life. He murmured with

grief so thick I could wring it from the air. “On May Day twenty-

five years ago, Terra was May Queen. After her crownin’, we were

gonna meet in our secret place to figure out how to tell Pastor she

was pregnant and ask him to marry us. Instead, Marsh and Jay, we

were all messin’ ’round, and I passed out drunk. Terra waited for me.

Nobody heard her scream after Birch Markle got outta his family’s

cel ar. She wasn’t found until a few days later, when Jay was tending

some horses. He heard some cackling by Promise Bridge and found

Birch poking a stick at what he’d done.”

The May Queen.

Why Papa hated May Day so very much.

“The county police investigated,” Papa went on. “They didn’t be-

lieve that Birch killed her, said I’d done it, that I didn’t want the baby.

The thing was, I couldn’t remember what had happened that night,

and the police took me to their station in town and questioned me

for two days. We didn’t know any lawyers, and Mamie and my daddy

didn’t have the money to hire one. Jackdaw brought Jay and Marsh,

handed the police eyewitnesses, but they said my friends were cov-

erin’ for me.”

“Is that why Sheriff hasn’t brought in the county police?” I asked.

“Can’t trust ’em.” Papa rubbed his forehead. “It wasn’t until Birch’s

sister told the police she knew her brother did it . . . He’d killed some

animals before . . .”

I held Wednesday tight under my arm. Suddenly, it seemed too

easy for her to escape. To meet some horrible end. I caught up to

21

Papa. He put his arm around me and kissed my forehead. If this aw-

ful history had never been, I wouldn’t exist. I swallowed the sickness

of that thought and said, “You left the Glen.”

“I never intended to return, but guilt brought me back. I couldn’t

leave Mamie and Rue. Maybe I thought I could stop Birch from co-

min’ back and killin’ animals if I took care of them. The Glen, for

good and bad, is home.”

Papa paused near the gate of our home’s fence. His eyes were

heartbroken. Telling me about his past had restored his grief. “It was

easier to let myself think Birch was dead, but I knew better. I saw him

once in the field, when you were a baby. He was covered in rotting

skins and watching the house. I ran for my rifle, but he was gone.

He’s been in the woods since. Folks said he began screaming after I

first left. He ain’t stopped.”

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Chapter Eighteen

No one ain’t seen Birch much, but no one wants to. The

screams are bad enough. Those who’ve caught sight of him

know him by the smell. You don’t forget the death stench.

Makes your blood run right cold, it does.

“You gotta warm up, Ivy. You’re too cold.” Violet spread out the blan-

ket in the field for a late picnic. “Your fingernails’ll turn blue.”

I drew Mamie’s blanket around my shoulders. Beads of conden-

sation rolled down the glass of sweet tea resting on a crate she had

overturned for a table. She slathered bread with strawberry marma-

lade made from last year’s crop and nudged it toward me.

“You won’t eat?” August asked from his perch on another crate.

“Ants’ll get it.”

Beneath my blanket, I crushed the folded drawing of the map

within my palm. I’d slept with it tucked under my pillow the night

before.

“Have it.” I offered the bread to August, content to pet Wednesday,

who was nipping my fingers.

He swiped the slice of bread. “I ain’t ever one to turn down food.”

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I smiled. Being among friends felt good, not hiding away inside

my room with its shadows and cobwebs. They came over after school,

time I once spent with Heather. Time I now didn’t know what to do

with myself.

Violet tipped back her head and twirled under the sun’s marigold

rays. Her hair floated around her, some braids held with beads. She

was barefoot and oblivious to the dirt covering her toes, happy under

the sun’s spires. This was day’s sharpest light, when it became pierc-

ing and fought the encroaching dusk.

“I gotta run,” August said. “I’ve gotta get home.”

“Why don’t you patrol with Rook?” I asked. It was a blunt ques-

tion, rude maybe. He was Rook’s best friend. If Rook wasn’t with

Heather and me, he was with August. That boy should’ve gone out

with him.

August lowered his head. “Don’t think I ain’t out there by choice.