Twenty-Six
I have to make sure Beck’s okay. I have to photograph these nails. I have to get away, get away, get away.
I squirm back, only to back into nothing.
I flail, realizing I’ve nearly run myself off the roof.
Heart lodged in my throat, I force myself toward the nest and away from the grass below.
Beck is hunched up against the wall next to the open hole of the window, knees tucked into her chest and her body heaving.
Her gaze is locked on the nest, eyes wide in a horror she can’t look away from.
“Beck!” I try again.
But no answer. She can hear me, but she can’t hear me. My own heartbeat picks up, but I tell myself to stay calm. One of us has to be calm. We just found Paisley’s nails separated from her body, and I have to stay calm.
I’ve had panic attacks before, as far back as my first time going to camp at age ten.
I’d insisted I wanted to go and be like Owen but had choked right as my mom was dropping me off.
I remember Owen leaving the car, chipper, and I just broke down in the back seat.
My mom, who’s usually so strict about schedules and efficiency, turned off the engine and got in the back with me.
She told me about distractions, breathing techniques.
She told me about how sorry she was, about how I got this awful thing from her.
But how she was okay, and I’d be okay too.
I don’t know if being autistic automatically means having anxiety or if they just often go together, but I felt so safe in that moment knowing we shared the anxiety and she got through it.
She told me that there’s always a way to get through these bad thoughts.
And once they were through, she told me I had a choice—I could face whatever had caused the panic attack or I could listen to my body and try again later.
I have to get Beck to that choice.
I bridge the gap between us. I scoot in across from her on my knees and grab her hands. She’s burning hot from the adrenaline, her every muscle quivering like mine do after a really hard workout. But I feel out-of-body, completely in control and calm. I have to be for her.
“Come onto your knees with me,” I say. “Give yourself a little more room to let your lungs expand.” Beck doesn’t move except for a squeeze in her hands. “Tuck your legs to your side and try to sit up.”
When she moves her legs, I help pull her up to her knees. Her breathing remains shallow, but her torso is free. I can see every muscle pressing in and out in rapid succession.
“Okay,” I say. “Good. Do you want me to let go of your hands?”
Beck shakes her head.
“Okay,” I say. “My water is near the entrance. Do you want me to grab it for you?”
She shakes her head again.
“Then let’s start with getting a bit of the energy out. It’s all adrenaline with a panic attack,” I continue. “Can you tap your thumb against your index finger, middle finger, ring finger, pinky, and the reverse?” I show her with my own hand. “Do it as fast or as slowly as you need.”
Beck mirrors my motion, her thumb moving at lightning speed. As fast as her breathing. Her lungs sound crackly, like mucus is building up from her body’s attempts to sob away the shock and pain. She could full-on pass out if she doesn’t slow her breathing down.
“Good,” I say. “Now try to slow it down. Count to one before doing the next movement.”
Her chest hitches and her movements start to slow. Shaky at first, but then a steady, slow beat.
Her breaths come slower too.
“Good,” I say. “You’re doing a great job.”
The sobs become sniffles and finally she speaks, “I’m sorry.”
I run my thumbs along her knuckles like my mom did to me.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” She looks up at me, her eyes puffy and bloodshot, cheeks splotchy.
Like she looked at the burial. “Do you want to take a break? I can see if the nails lead to any more clues. You don’t have to.
We have all day here.” I look out over the forest from our height.
“We can even go back to the campsite. We can wait for the car and leave once it’s ready. It should be done tonight.”
“Give me a few hours,” she says. “I can just sit in the sun.”
“Okay,” I say. “Do you feel steady?”
Beck lets me go, slowly rising back to her feet. “Yeah. I’m good.” She heads to the window, halfway in to return to the ground. She turns around. “Thank you, Emma.”
A bolt of pride flies through me. “You’re welcome.”
When Mom had given me the choice about returning to camp or not, I’d said no. I wanted to go home. While Owen had spent three weeks at camp, I had accompanied Liam to every kids’ movie and arcade and fenced-in playground that summer while Dad wrote in the closest seating area.
Now, I don’t want to wait to re-face my fear. Once I see Beck walk through the grass and find a place to lie down and shut her eyes, I approach.
“How ya doing?” I ask.
“Okay.” She looks off into the distance.
“She died, Em. Some sick fuck ripped off her fingernails, killed her, and left her for coyotes to eat. She’s gone and she must’ve been so fucking terrified and—” She exhales, catching herself.
“We need to find this freak. I need to know why someone would rip apart teenage girls they don’t even know. This is so awful.”
I agree. We have to keep going. “Yeah. I was going to look at the nails again.”
Beck swallows hard. “I’m gonna stay here a bit longer. I still feel a little lightheaded from the panic attack.”
“Okay.” I squeeze her hand before I return to that roof.
I bend down close enough to the nest to take in the smell of plant decay and bird pheromone and photograph every angle.
I try to figure out the story. Surely a bird wouldn’t travel that far to find materials for a nest, so Paisley’s body must’ve been around here somewhere.
It lends even more to the theory that they all died here and their bodies were moved.
I take the nail Beck had grabbed and examine that as much as I can.
There’s dried blood stuck to the nail bed, but it’s miraculously intact.
The pliers explain it, but it’s still such a miracle.
No blood at the top of the nail, just at the bottom where it was presumably removed.
So, she didn’t fight back when she was killed?
I would think hair or dirt would’ve stayed caked in if that were the case.
Ivy mentioned drugs. Maybe they were all drugged or took more drugs out here? It would explain how a woman killed them, if one did.
We only know that all of them had some body part removed and moved somewhere else.
If I can find some kind of ritual site, maybe that’ll lead to the killer. Or at least be enough to get the authorities out here investigating. They can do the terrifying parts for us.
I make my way back to the road, scanning the ghost town for my next move. I have to think opposite of how a search team would. Where would they not think to look? Four of Paisley’s nails were in the bird’s nest, so where are the other ones?
I start my walk along the road, ready to check the houses with a new fervor.
Even if the thought of what those pliers did makes my stomach turn.
Paisley might’ve been responsible for so much pain in Beck’s and my lives, but I can’t imagine what she went through with those things.
Someone ripped them off her hands. I had one incident as a kid when a can of tomatoes fell on my foot at the grocery store and the pain of that is still so visceral. I can’t imagine having to peel it—
I gag, stopping in my path as the spasm hits. I cannot think about that. I have to keep looking.
Ten little buildings, two collapsed. I remember a photograph of the collapsed ones from my research.
There’s something extra sad about them, like an event caused them to fall when the other ones built the same didn’t.
Termites, a fire? I can’t remember if one of them that collapsed had anything to do with the schoolteacher, if that was directly involved in the ritual she did.
Either way, it’s just a pile of rubble. Maybe the other one had termites.
But something about it feels…wrong to me. Repeating that information feels like tasting a rotten bit of food. I pull out my map and read the description of the ghost town.
I gasp.
The official guide only states that the schoolhouse burned down in the 1900s. Nothing else should be broken.
Maybe the guide’s old. Maybe it’s all innocent, natural, just something that hasn’t been updated.
But I run to the dinky pile of wood, the one that was presumably once someone’s shack of a home.
One look down at the logs and I can see scorch marks like scars.
I toss aside the smallest pieces of wood with ease, even get through a few smaller logs by sheer force of will.
But as I get to the larger logs, even rolling them away has me sweating and the muscles in my back and arms aching like I’ve never felt before.
I’m moving the remains of a home, a task that shouldn’t be possible for me.
But here we are, and I won’t stop until it’s done.
“What’re you doing?” Beck asks as she joins me.
“Trying to see why this thing collapsed.”
“It’s burnt, isn’t it?”
I look Beck in the eyes. “Yeah, it’s burnt.” I pause. “But I think something else happened. It feels too coincidental that this thing collapsed when there may be something to hide.”
The explanation could still be innocent. Idiot campers who tried to smoke or light off fireworks in here and caused its demise.
But that’s not what we find underneath it all. One look down and I suddenly wish time would speed up, fast enough that I could wake up so far away this would all feel like a distant nightmare.
We find a circle of rocks, more scorch marks populating the middle of the formation. An illegal firepit.
Nothing good could ever come from making something like this.
Especially not when everyone says there’s a witch who needs sacrifices to protect the town.
I hold my eyes shut a moment, fists clenched tightly at my sides.
The witch isn’t real. Despite every instinct from childhood screaming she’s here, I know she’s not.
What is real are people who believe in her.
Those people were at this spot at some point and burned down a historic structure to hide it.
“Beck,” I say, breathless. “Are you ready to see whatever we’re gonna see?”
“I’m ready for answers, at least,” Beck mutters.
We push aside as much dirt and natural debris as we can. I taste bitterness at the back of my throat.
A speckle of orange pokes through the browns. I bend down, my skin crawling out of sheer instinct. Even though I’ve seen the other four nails, god, these are still so foul.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
God.
The blackened orange rectangles shine through the ashes. I pick up a twig and turn one over, revealing the blood stained on the bottom. I swear I can smell the rusty scent of it.
I pull back to my full height, nausea blooming.
Beck snaps some pictures. “It’s okay. This is disgusting.” She swallows hard.
But it’s your sister.
I take a deep breath with her, brushing away a bit more dead plants and a nail off to the side.
Something else contrasts with the earth tones.
A tip of something blackened, almost shiny.
No, it is shiny. Like a gem.
I don’t want to know. My animal instincts freeze me in this spot.
But we have to know. I have to know.
I get onto my hands and knees, the old plants and rocks digging into my skin. I focus on the pain as I get a clear look at what’s glinting in the sun. I brush more debris aside.
My stomach goes cold as I realize what I’m touching.
I’m touching blackened incisors and half-burnt clumps of various colors of hair.
And the thing I find when I yank my hand away from that?
It’s so much worse than the fingernails.
It’s shriveled and black like a Halloween prop, crusted on the outside but squishy with even the slightest pinch of pressure from my touch.
The glint is a tiny purple stud earring.
Harlow’s ear.
And I throw up all over it.