Chapter 3
PROPAGATION
Harper
I’M THE WORST ALMOST-GIRLFRIEND IN the world.
I never told Nolan about Bryce Mahoney. Frankly, it just never crossed my mind. It’s not like I figured he needed to know, even though I was holding on to Bryce’s mangled, tinfoil-wrapped tibia the first time we met. Or is that a lie? Did I maybe think about it and decide not to tell him?
Nolan’s words echo in my head. You’ve got to let me in.
Would everything really be easier if I did?
Or would I just risk putting Nolan in the crosshairs of a past that’s catching up with me?
Or is there still a latent fear lying dormant somewhere inside me that I could be handing him the shovel to bury me with if I share all my secrets?
He is the man who came here to kill me, after all. What could he do with that power?
But I don’t know the answers to those questions.
I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved, and now I’m losing Arthur a little bit every day as he unravels in slow motion. I don’t know if I can bear loving and losing someone else. Not when I know that love will consume me. So I walked out of the tent and away from Nolan when he begged to be let in.
I sigh and stare up at the distillery, the doors cordoned off with police tape and an officer patrolling the perimeter.
I can see a team of forensic investigators in hazmat suits through the leaded windows.
My heart shudders beneath my sternum. Who knows what they might find, or what Nolan and I might have missed?
I don’t feel guilt for killing Sam, only satisfaction, much like the sense of accomplishment I feel when I stand at the door of the manor house and look across the ornate garden.
But the fear of being caught still lodges in my thoughts like a thorn.
“I hope they’re done in there soon,” Lukas says as he stops at my side. When I look up at him, worry is etched so deeply into his features that it’s moved in and started paying rent. “I won’t be ready in time for the Taste of Terror festival if not.”
“On the bright side, in a place like Cape Carnage, that’ll be great for business. Maybe you can get the distillery added to the Carnage Ghost and Gravestones tour. Make up some new drinks. Whiskey Specter. Boozy Banshee. Carnage Corpsemaker—”
“Jesus, Harper. That’s a little morbid. People died in there.”
“Eh. The only thing that sells better than tits is death. At least around here.”
Lukas’s head tilts. “You think so?”
“I know so. Henry’s raking it in at Craft-A-Corpse. I heard he bought a new boat,” I say.
Lukas hums a thoughtful note. I’m betting there’ll be a whole business plan around this idea by morning. “Maybe you’ve got a point. Not sure what Grumps would think about that, though.”
“You should ask him. I bet he’d love to give his two cents,” I reply, trying not to sound too chipper when I barrel on. “Actually, I’m wondering if the B12 supplements are starting to help with some of his memory symptoms. He had a really great morning.”
Lukas shoots me only a brief glance, trying to hide the pity in his eyes. “His mornings usually are a little better.”
“Yeah, but he was recalling recent events, not just things in the more distant past.”
Lukas turns to face me, this time not shielding his regret behind a mask.
“I just don’t want you to get your hopes up and have them come crashing down, Harper.
We both know what his diagnosis means. Even if the B12 is helping—and I really hope it is—his symptoms won’t remain stable forever.
” Lukas lays a hand on my arm, and my eyes sting.
“Look . . . I got an appointment to check out Whispering Pines in August, once things hopefully get back on track with the distillery opening. I’d really like it if you come with me to check it out.
I was looking into their memory care program, and when the time comes, when you and I both agree on it, I think it could be a really great fit for him. ”
It feels like knives are sliding down my throat when I say, “Yeah. Of course. I want to be there.”
My focus drops to the grass and lingers there in the silence between us.
I taste blood before I realize I’ve bitten my lip raw.
When I touch it, my fingers come away painted crimson.
“Oh, Harper. Christ, I’m sorry to worry you,” Lukas says as he reels me into a hug.
He smells like sawdust and vanilla, and I close my eyes in the comforting embrace.
“Don’t be sorry, Lukas. I know you’re doing the right thing. It’s just . . . ” I clear my throat before my voice breaks. It’s not a future that either one of us wants to face, and I know he doesn’t want to be in this position any more than I do. “It’s just fucking hard. And sad. And unfair.”
“Yeah. It really fucking is. But we’re going to do it together, every step, okay?” Lukas says, tightening his hold. I squeeze him back. “You know you’re like a sister to me, and I love you, right?”
I nod against his chest. “I love you too.” We stay for a long moment like that, swaying like seagrass, and I feel some of the tension not only easing in my own body, but within Lukas too.
With a final squeeze, I let him go. “Come on,” I say, forcing a smile as I lift my backpack from the ground and slide it on.
“Let’s get this search going before people start thinking we’re about to head off to Nightfog for a date. ”
“Gross.”
“So gross.”
We grin at each other, then head to the small group of volunteers and spread a map on the dilapidated picnic table behind the distillery, agreeing on the best route through the terrain.
We plan to fan out across the sprawling property, covering the grassy areas and sparser forest first before venturing into rougher ground tomorrow when we’ll have more hours of daylight.
We start methodically picking our way across the clearing in a small group, our eyes on the ground, searching for evidence of McMillan or Hornell that I know we won’t find.
I wander closer to the distillery outbuildings, keeping my steps measured and the group’s presence in my periphery.
But as much as I seem to be with them, I’m not.
I’m beckoned by the groaning bones of a dilapidated building.
I’m summoned by the cracked glass that hides secrets of a nameless legend.
I’m set on my own objective. The grain shed.
I’ve never been inside before, but Arthur has told me about it.
His first burial ground. Arthur hid his first victim here when he was just sixteen, before he even inherited the wealth and properties and businesses of the Lancaster legacy.
I know there will be nothing of McMillan or the others to find here, of course.
This secret graveyard was abandoned long before Arthur closed the distillery, a business he could no longer bear to run when Poppy died.
But somehow it feels right to check in on it now, and to bury something special with it.
I slip unnoticed around the side of the building and head to the single door, bolted shut with a steel bar and a thick padlock.
But I hold the master to all of Arthur’s secret locks.
I pull my keys from my pocket, select the nondescript Abloy key, and slide it into the grooves.
With a final glance at my surroundings, I pull the lock free and enter the grain shed.
The air is thick with the scent of must and mold and rye dust. Spiderwebs flutter among the rafters.
Empty grain bags are scattered across the space, their woven polyethylene fibers gnawed by rodents that have long since died beneath the floorboards.
I toe my boot over one of the decaying sacks, scraping the dust off the letters.
It’s the same as the ones we dug up at the Ballantyne River that were filled with bones.
Though I feel a measure of relief knowing we successfully moved the bodies before the property sale was completed, it would be foolish to think we’re in the clear.
Not when sixteen more bodies are buried beneath my feet.
“Oh, Arthur,” I say on the heels of a sigh. “You’re certainly getting me back for all those Christina Ricci jokes, aren’t you?”
There’s nothing I can do about these bodies now, other than hope that they’re so deep and old and decomposed that no one will find them. But at least nothing seems disturbed.
I head to a desk beneath one of the windows and scan the yellowing paper strewn across its surface.
Receipts with curled edges. A ledger of grain shipments, the leather covered in velvety mold.
I pick up a Farmer’s Almanac and sweep the dust from the cover.
“Weather forecasts for all regions,” it claims, along with fishing guides, zodiac secrets, planting tables, and even “mysteries of the universe.” I snort but thumb through it all the same until I stop at a bookmarked page.
On page sixty-eight is an article titled “A Tale of Two Ships,” a story about a single-masted sailboat called Thursday’s Child that broke the 135-year race record of the much larger clipper ship, the Flying Cloud.
But it’s page sixty-nine that interests me.
The bottom half of the page is missing, and at the top, a note has been scrawled across the typeface:
How you shine, soaked landscape,
Set alight by the rays that pierce the cloudy sky!
It’s not Arthur’s handwriting. I don’t know what that means, or who would have written it, or why.
There’s something oddly eerie about it, like it was meant to disintegrate here, not to be uncovered.
It feels like I’m trespassing in a private moment.
A correspondence left to history, where Arthur clearly meant for it to stay, along with everything else he couldn’t bear to keep alive once Poppy died.