When the Bones Sing

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Seven

“Dovie?”

At first I think the voice is coming from the woman in white, so I whisper back to her. “Mama?”

“It’s Lo, Dovie.”

I glance to my left, and he’s crawling out from under the bushes where he’s been hiding. When I look back to my right, the woman in white is still there.

“Mama.” I breathe the word again. It’s like a ghost of a word in my mouth. A ghost of a name for a ghost mother.

Dark hair falls around her shoulders like cascading shadows, and her eyes blaze blue with an otherworldly light. She’s pale and shimmering and I’m scared to breathe. If I do, she’ll disappear.

Lo comes to stand beside me. I feel his hand in mine. “You see her,” he whispers, and I nod.

“I see her.”

Mama kneels down and puts that white rose on the ground under the naked crepe myrtle bushes. She smiles at me, and I see her lips form my name.

Dove.

But all I hear is the mountain wind singing through the tops of the trees.

And then she’s gone. I watch her blow away like a cloud.

Lo squeezes my hand, and I turn to face him. I slip my free hand into my pocket and find that skeleton key. I pull it out and clutch it tight in my fist.

Then, for the first time in my life, I let go of Lo’s hand and back away from him.

I look him up and down in the light coming from the front porch. He’s dirty and disheveled. Scratched up and sweating. I’m staring at his feet. Beat-up tennis shoes he’s been wearing for years. But there’s something splattered across the white rubber toe. Something reddish-brown that makes my stomach turn.

“I’m sorry I took off tonight,” he tells me. “I should’ve stayed with you.”

“There’s blood on your shoe,” I say, and he looks down at it like I said his laces were untied.

“Yeah. I know. It’s been there a while. I been tryin’ to scrub it off.” He takes a step toward me, and I take a step back.

We stare at each other under the light of a grinning Ozarks moon. Lo holds out his hand to me, but I don’t take it. I take another step back and tighten my fingers around the secret I’m holding in my fist.

It’s quiet for a few long seconds before he says, “You found the key. Didn’t you?” He might as well have hauled off and punched me in the face. That’s how surprised I am. “I put it in the ground with Hannah for you to find, Dovie.” He pauses and runs a hand through his tangled hair. “I wanted you to know about me, and I knew I’d never be able to tell you.”

I open my hand and we both stare at the skeleton key in my palm. He gave me that skeleton key to keep me safe. Then I gave it back to him. And now he’s given it back to me.

The spell has come full circle.

But neither of us is safe.

I should feel something. I should feel afraid. I should feel angry. I should feel horrified and betrayed and disgusted and shocked.

But I don’t feel anything. I don’t think anything.

I’m not anything.

I’ve just stopped existing.

“Xan’s missing,” I tell him, and Lo stares at me. “Did you take him?” I swallow something bitter and burning that rises in the back of my throat. “Did you hurt him?” I pull myself up to stand a little straighter and look my best friend in the eye. “Did you kill him, Lo?”

Lo shakes his head. He’s so pale. More ghostly than my mother, who’s been dead for fourteen years, I guess. If the wind kicks up again, he might blow away, too.

“I never killed anyone, Dovie. I swear.”

“Don’t lie to me, Lo.” I close my fingers around that old key so tight that the metal cuts into my skin. I slip it back into my pocket. “You tell me the truth. We don’t lie to each other. Not you and me.”

“I’m not lying, Dovie. I’ve never lied. I just haven’t told the truth. I couldn’t. I was so afraid to say it. That’s why I left that key when I put Hannah in the ground.” I sway on my feet when he says that— when I put Hannah in the ground —because that’s a confession, as sure as it’s anything. Right up until that moment, I still partly believed there was another answer. I have to fight hard to keep from passing out. “I wanted you to find it and know,” he goes on. “So I wouldn’t have to tell you.”

“Wouldn’t have to tell me what?” I grit my teeth. I want him to say it out loud. I need him to speak the words or I won’t be able to believe it. Not until he says it to my face. “What were you so afraid to say to me, Lo?” All I want in the world is to grab him and hold him and stroke his hair and tell him it’s going to be okay. But I can’t. I can barely stand to look at him. “I promise, Lo. I’ll do everything I can to help you. But you have to tell me the truth. Right here. Right now. All of it.”

He looks over his shoulder, back toward the darkened corners of the yard where the shadows are the thickest. “It was the Howler, Dovie. I swear to God.” I can’t listen to any more nonsense. “Granny Pearl said the Howler’s a harbinger. An announcer of death come stalking. But he’s more than that, Dovie. He’s been leaving me bodies to bury.”

“What?” All the air leaves my lungs with that one word.

“Three years, Dovie.” Lo crumples to his knees in the grass. “Three years I’ve been wakin’ up at night to find bodies spread out in the moonlight, waiting for me. Left in the woods—in the shadows—just beyond where the lantern light reaches from the front porch. I hear that howl go up, and I know what I’m gonna find when I go out lookin’.” He shudders hard. “I found Riley Alden laid out on a rock like an offering. Guts wet and slidin’ out in the rain.”

“Lo. Stop.” I was wrong. I don’t want the truth. I can’t hear this from his mouth. It’s too much.

“Hannah Nelby was shot clean through with an arrow. Right through the throat.” He grimaces. “Almost took her head clean off.”

“Stop it.” My stomach turns. “There’s no Howler. He’s a myth, Lo. He doesn’t exist.”

“There has to be.” He chokes hard. “If there isn’t, who’s been leavin’ those hikers up at the cabin?”

I kneel down in front of him, and I take his hands in mine. I’m crying now. Tears streaming down my face. “I think maybe you’re the Howler, Lo. I don’t think you know it. I don’t think you’re aware of it. But I think it must be you.” He’s shaking his head. There are tears on his cheeks now, too.

“No. Dovie. No. I promise.”

“I don’t think it’s your fault, Lo.” I lay my hand on his cheek, and he starts to sob. His breath comes in hitches and gasps and gulps. “I think you must be sick. You need help. I know you. I know your heart. And I know you’d never hurt anyone, but—”

“You’re wrong.” He grabs my hands and squeezes so tight. “You’re wrong about so much, Dovie.” He looks back toward Mama’s crepe myrtles. “You saw your mama tonight. Her spirit.”

I can’t even think about Mama right now. I can’t process it. It’s too much. Too strange. Too terrible. Too wonderful. Too everything. On top of all the rest of it. I have to shut that off. For now. I’ll figure it out later.

“If you can believe in ghosts, you can believe in the Howler,” Lo says. He takes a deep, shaky breath. “You can believe in me, Dovie.” He reaches up to wipe the tears off my cheek, and I think I might die from the ache that opens up somewhere deep in my chest. “You have to believe in me.”

Inside the house, the phone starts to ring. But I ignore it.

“Why would you bury people you didn’t kill, Lo?” All those bodies. All those years. It doesn’t make any sense. “Why would you keep that secret?”

The phone goes silent.

He tilts his head to the side and stares at me like he can’t believe I even have to ask that. “You know what people here think of us, Dovie. Of me. Of Granny Pearl. The whole Wilder clan. Of anyone different than them.” He leans in closer. “Of you.” Lo shakes his head. “If I’d come down out of those hills sayin’ somethin’ was leavin’ bodies up there in the woods—right on my doorstep, practically—how long before they would have come for me? How long before they’d have come up the mountain with pitchforks and torches, like the old days, to set fire to the cabin, and me and Granny Pearl inside it?” He reaches out to stroke my hair. “How long before they would’ve come after you?”

He’s right about all of that. I look toward the black plastic covering the window, and I think about that rock. They’ve always been waiting. Looking for an excuse to turn on us.

“So you kept burying the bodies?”

I think about that shovel again, and I almost throw up.

Dogs got some chickens yesterday and I had to bury ’em.

Lo nods. “I knew you’d find them. Get them home to their people.” He chokes back another sob. “That’s why they’ve been haunting me, Dovie. They know I’ve been part of it. And they been wanting me to stop it.”

“So you left me that key.”

He nods. “So I left you that key. So you’d know and you’d help me put an end to this.”

I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know what to do.

“Is Xan dead?” My voice quivers and my stomach is in knots.

“I don’t know,” Lo says. “Maybe not yet. Maybe we can find him.”

“How?”

“We’re gonna have to hunt the Howler.”

Inside the house, the phone starts to ring again. It’s two o’clock in the morning. Who the hell is calling right now?

I can’t make myself get up. I can’t let go of Lo. Can’t take my eyes off him. If I do, he’ll vanish like Mama.

The phone rings.

And rings.

And rings.

And rings.

And rings.

Finally it stops, and Nana pushes open the screen door to step onto the front porch. She squints out into the front yard at me and Lo.

“Dovie? That you?”

“Yeah, Nana. It’s me.”

“Phone for you, girl. I told you it’s been ringin’ off the hook all night.” Nana shakes her head. “Nobody ever calls here.”

She heads back inside and I push myself up out of the grass and move toward the front porch, with Lo following behind me.

In the kitchen, Nana has two mugs of tea ready. She hands one to Lo and settles him at the table. Then she puts the other one in my hand and points me toward the phone before she heads back to her bedroom.

I pick the receiver up off the counter and try to steady my voice before I speak. “Hello?”

“Is this Dove?”

“Yeah.”

“Listen. I’m sorry. I know it’s the middle of the night. It’s Candy. Hannah’s sister.”

“Oh.” My heart squeezes.

“That sheriff just called me,” she says. Her voice is stretched so tight it’s about to snap. I can tell she’s trying to keep it together. “He thinks maybe they found Hannah.” She stops. “Found her body.”

“Is that why you’re calling?”

“No,” she tells me. “Actually, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all night. I had this question. I wanted—” Her voice cracks and splinters into a choked sob. “But now I really have to know.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m really sorry.”

There’s a long pause.

“Do you think it was that redheaded guy? That’s what I wanted to ask. Why I’ve been calling.”

“I don’t— What redheaded guy?”

“The one I told you about. The one we met in the stained glass shop.”

My stomach drops, and the room starts to spin.

“You met a redhead in the stained glass gallery?”

“Yeah. There were two men in there. One of them, the one with the beard, he sold us the suncatcher. But the redhead is the one who gave us the compass. So we gave him that trail angel card. Like I told you. Remember?”

I have to grab the kitchen counter to steady myself. My legs are shaking so hard I doubt their ability to hold me up.

“And he’s the one you saw later that night?” I’m having trouble making my mouth work. My brain has stalled out. “In the woods? The redhead?”

“Yeah.” Candy hesitates again. “Is he the one who killed my sister? I need to know.”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay,” she says, and I can hear that she’s crying hard now.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her again.

“I’m sorry, too,” she says. “I’m sorry we ever went to Lucifer’s Creek.”

The line goes dead and I’m left holding the phone while my mind spins faster and faster.

“Dovie?” Lo says. “What was that about?”

“I think I know who the Ozark Howler is.” I put the receiver back and move to the table. “It’s Ira,” I whisper, and I feel my heart twist up, right along with my stomach. “It’s Ira Langdon.”

“Ira?” Lo shakes his head. “No, Dovie. It wouldn’t be Ira. He’s—”

The screen door opens and closes and I hear Daddy’s boots in the hallway. When he comes into the kitchen, he looks me and Lo over before he moves toward the microwave to heat up the plate Nana’s left in there for him. I want to tell him that I saw Mama tonight.

That I believe him.

And Nana.

That we’ve all seen her now. I want to tell him that I know he’s right about what he said. About Mama being dead. That once these hiker murders are over and done with, we’ll go into the hills together, him and me, and we’ll find Mama’s bones and bring her home to rest.

But I don’t tell him any of that. That’s a long conversation for another night. Right now I need to ask him about something different. Because Xan is still out there somewhere, and if he’s alive now, he won’t be much longer.

“Daddy. I found somethin’ in your desk. A little gold angel pin.”

He stops pouring himself a glass of milk to look at me. “What’re you doin’ diggin’ around in my desk?”

“Nothin’. Lookin’ for a marker.” I wait for him to put the milk back in the fridge. “Where’d you get it? That gold angel.”

Daddy sighs. The microwave dings and he takes the plate out. Fried chicken and green beans. My mouth is suddenly watering and my stomach rumbles, but that’s something else that will have to wait.

“It’s Ira’s,” he tells me. “He dropped it in the gallery the other day, and I didn’t get a chance to give it back to him. Shoulda taken it up the mountain with us this mornin’. Didn’t think about it.”

“You and Ira used to go huntin’ together all the time? Right?” I’ve heard him talk about it my whole life. “You mentioned it to that guy at the lodge.”

Daddy nods. “I was never half the hunter Ira was, though.”

“You called Ira the Ghost of the Ozarks.”

“That’s right.” Daddy takes a bite of chicken and washes it down with a swallow of cold milk while my mind races. “There wasn’t an animal he couldn’t sneak up on. They never heard him comin’.” He reaches for the salt. “Like a shadow stalkin’ these hills.”

I think about the times I’ve looked up to find Ira Langdon standing right beside me, and I never heard him coming.

In the gallery. The little bells over the door never jingled.

And in the alley that morning Turley drowned. He was just suddenly there.

Someone snatched Xan from two feet behind me and I never heard a thing.

Hannah Nelby was taken right outside their tent, and Candy never heard so much as a twig break.

“You okay?” Daddy asks me, and he turns to look at Lo, who’s still shaking and pale.

“Yeah. You in for the night?” I ask him, but Daddy shakes his head. “Gonna go back out soon as I eat. Just for a few hours.” He stops to look out the kitchen window at the moon hanging low over the tops of the trees. “Something feels strange about tonight.”

“Yeah,” I admit. “It does.”

He looks back and forth from me to Lo.

“You stayin’ with us again tonight, Lowan?”

“No,” I answer for him. “I’m actually goin’ up to Granny Pearl’s with him. Thought we’d take the truck, if that’s okay. Save us the walk in the dark.”

Daddy nods. “Keys are under the seat.” He takes his plate and heads toward the living room so he can watch a little television while he eats, but before he leaves the kitchen, he looks at both of us and says, “You two need somethin’, you got some problem or somethin’, you let me know. Okay?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “We will.”

I should ask for his help right here and now, but I don’t. I can’t think how to tell him we believe his childhood best friend is a serial killer.

Lo and I were wrong when we thought it was Turley. I was wrong when I thought it could be Daddy. I was wrong again when I knew for sure it was Lo.

I’m not saying anything to anyone else until we know for damn sure that Ira Langdon is the angel of death.

“Come on,” I whisper, and I grab Lo’s arm and pull him toward the front door. “We’re gonna go up to the lodge and have a look around.”

“You believe me, Dovie?”

“Yeah,” I say, and I reach out to run my hand through his wild, beautiful hair. “I don’t believe you killed anybody, Lo.”

When I look into his eyes, though, I know it might not make much difference. At least not for him. The things Lo’s done and the things he’s seen—those midnight trips into the dark forest carrying bloody bodies to plant in the damp earth—I’m not sure that’s a thing that he can survive.

That’s a terrible truth.

When we step out onto the front porch, Deputy Jonah is coming up the stone path. “Dovie,” he says when he sees me, and he looks like he’s afraid I’m gonna eat him alive. “Lowan. Guess you ain’t missin’ no more, huh?”

“What are you doin’ back here?” I ask him.

“Sheriff sent me to check on you,” he tells me. “We’re gettin’ ready to head up to where you found Hannah Nelby. Sheriff wanted me to make sure you were still here. Told me to tell you to stay put. His orders.”

“We’re not goin’ anywhere,” I lie. “Just comin’ out for some air. If you think that’s okay with the sheriff.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Jonah tells me, and a nervous grin slides across his face. “I don’t think he’d mind that at all.” He gives me a little wink. “Not that I’ve gotta tell him everything, anyway.” He turns on his heels to head back down the path.

“Hey, Jonah,” I say, and he turns back to look at me with this terrified look on his face. He clearly thought he was gonna get away, but now he’s not so sure. “Is there anything you can tell us about these murders? Any little thing that seemed odd or weird to you?” He chews on his lip and brushes a bug away from his cheek. “Smart guy like you, I figured maybe you’d noticed something that Sheriff might’ve missed.”

He blushes. “I’m not supposed to talk about this stuff with anybody.”

“But I’m the one who finds the bodies, remember? I’m not just anybody. I’m part of the team. Right?” I give him a big smile. If Jonah thinks I’m magic, let me prove it to him. “I could maybe teach you how I do it. A guy with a talent like that, you’d be sheriff before you turn twenty-five. Runnin’ this whole damn county.”

“Shit. Really?”

I shrug. “I said maybe.”

Jonah looks over his shoulder, then he lowers his voice and says, “There are two things I been thinking are weird—like you said—for a while now. First, we’ve had six tracking dogs die. Six.” He holds up that many fingers, just to make sure I know how many six is. “They come in with the search and rescue teams, and their handlers send ’em off to do their thing. And then we find ’em dead. Nobody wants to bring their dogs up here no more.”

“What’s the second thing?”

“Somethin’ little.” He shrugs. “All these murders, and ain’t nobody ever been taken on a Saturday night.” Jonah laughs. “Ain’t that funny? Not a single Saturday night. Sheriff says even a serial killer must need a night off.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and grins at us. “Guess that’s a lucky thing, huh?”

“Why is it lucky?” I ask him, and he looks at me like I’m not very bright.

“Ira Langdon and his bluegrass band go on down at Donny Blue’s every Saturday evenin’. Sheriff and me are big fans. Them boys can sure play. It’d be a cryin’ shame to have to miss that show.”