Chapter 14 Above
Above
At eleven, I put out my do not disturb sign, lock the door, and dial the number the podcast guy gave me. The line picks up almost at once, a pleasant male voice with an edge of chronic weariness on the other end. “This is Ethan.”
“Hi,” I say, stammering. “It’s—-my name is Audrey Dixon.”
“Hi,” he echoes. “You wanted to talk about the Halloween episode, right? That was a fun one. Not our usual thing. You said it had to do with a missing girl?”
“Meghan Vale,” I confirm. “You interviewed her, actually. On the episode.”
“The girl who said she saw the witch,” he says. “She’s missing?”
“Probably a runaway,” I say, which is only a little bit of a comfort and we both know it. “The thing is, no one’s really looking for her.”
“What’s your connection?” he asks carefully.
“I don’t really have one,” I confess. “I’m a counselor at her school and I work for Search and Rescue, but she isn’t one of my students and Search and Rescue isn’t involved. But . . . I don’t know. She reminds me of someone I used to know.”
For a little while, he says nothing. Deciding whether I’m a crackpot, probably. “What can I tell you?” he asks at last.
“I was hoping she might have said something to you that might give me some kind of hint about where she went.”
He makes a thoughtful sound. “I don’t know if I can help.
We spoke briefly. She said she had a story to tell, but she was pretty cagey on the details.
All she would say is that she was in the woods, and she saw Jenny Red--Hands, but that she disappeared into the mist. She was being coy about it.
I think she wanted me to work to get it out of her.
It sounds terrible, but I think she was enjoying being in control.
It made me think she was embellishing things for the sake of drama, so I cut things short. And—-” He stops himself.
“And?”
He clears his throat. “She was being, uh, flirtatious. I’m pretty sure to make me uncomfortable.
If that was the goal, it worked.” I wince.
I’ve known plenty of girls who acted like that—-coquettish and provocative, looking for a reaction from older men.
Frequently, they didn’t want the attention.
They wanted the power of making someone uncomfortable, or else they wanted the comfort of being turned down. It was proof that a guy was safe.
I remember suddenly Janie leaning across the counter at my dad’s shop while he was working the register, showing off her cleavage.
My dad’s utter lack of reaction or attention had seemed to put her out, but later, as we were walking together, she said suddenly, “Your dad’s pretty cool for an old dude.
” I was baffled by the comment then. Now I understand what she was looking for.
“Do you think she actually saw anything?” I ask.
“If you’re asking if she saw the witch of Franklin, I have to say no, since she doesn’t exist,” he says with a light chuckle. “As to whether she saw someone or something—-I couldn’t tell you. She was definitely enjoying the attention, but I got the sense there was some kind of substance behind it.”
“Did she say anything about what the person looked like?”
“The conversation didn’t get that far,” he says. “I couldn’t even tell you if she knew it was a woman for sure. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”
“No, that’s okay,” I say. I sigh, rubbing at the spot between my eyes. “I’m grasping at straws, mostly. Jenny Red--Hands seemed like as solid a lead as any. Which is pretty pathetic.”
“At least you’re looking for her.” His voice is warm, understanding.
“I have always wondered if there’s something going on in Franklin that led to the story,” I say. “Girls do seem to go missing here a lot, I mean.”
He sighs. “The thing about randomness is, most people expect that a random distribution is going to look pretty even. But true randomness results in clumping.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“It means that girls have disappeared in Franklin, yes. But absent evidence of a connection, it’s probably true randomness that we see as a pattern,” he tells me.
“I looked through pretty much every violent crime and missing person report for the last four decades. Which isn’t that hard, given how small your town is.
I couldn’t find anything. And for what it’s worth, I can guarantee you that the Jenny Red--Hands story is just that.
A story. It showed up right around 2000.
Not a whisper of it before that. And this didn’t come up until after the episode aired, but I think I know where it came from.
I stumbled across a casting call for a Nolan Rustad movie. ”
“The horror director?” I say.
“Right, but this was before he actually made anything. He was in college at the time, and he’s from Franklin originally. The casting call was for a character named Jenny, and the film was called The Witch with Red Hands.”
“Terrible title,” I say with a choked laugh.
“No kidding. The thing is, this was right after Blair Witch. I never heard back from Rustad’s people, but I’ve wondered if it wasn’t some kind of attempt at a viral marketing campaign.
In any case, it pops up right in 2000, seemingly fully formed.
It’s become modern folklore, but it’s absolutely not historical. ”
“At least I know I’m not going to run into a murderous witch while I’m hiking,” I say with forced humor.
“There’s the silver lining,” he says. There’s a pause in which he seems to be on the verge of saying something else, and I let the silence linger. “On the other hand . . .”
“Yes?” I prompt.
There’s the sound of a chair leaning back. “Sometimes these things can take on a life of their own. The origin doesn’t matter nearly as much as what happens once the story does exist. What people do with it.”
“Like—-say, if someone got inspired by the story of the witch and decided to off some cheaters,” I say.
“Luckily, I don’t think that’s happening,” he says.
“But it does give me an idea for a fun weekend activity,” I quip. It’s not that amusing, but he laughs obligingly. “I should let you go,” I say.
“Hold on,” he says. “You know, I’m looking through my notes and I just remembered something. I met Meghan in a coffee shop. I was a little late, and when I got there, she was writing in a diary.”
“A diary?”
“Yeah. It definitely wasn’t just a regular notebook—-it was one of those ones with a strap and a latch,” he says.
“So I don’t think it was schoolwork or anything.
If you could find that . . .” He leaves the rest unspoken.
Maybe I could figure out where she’d gone—-or maybe I could just find confirmation that she left under her own power.
I thank him again. He promises to let me know if he thinks of anything else, and then we end the call.
I sit drumming my fingers on the desk. And then I reach over to the desk phone and plug in the extension for the front desk.
“Hey, Lisa. Quick favor—-can you pull Theresa Abbott for me? No emergency, I just need to chat about her schedule. Thanks.” I hang up, mouth dry.
Sorry, Len, I think. I can’t let this go.
It’s just before lunch when Theresa Abbott arrives in my office. Friend number two, as I’ve been thinking of her. She genuinely needs to swap class periods, so it’s not like I’m pulling her out of class without reason, but my mind is on anything but her schedule.
“This should only take a few minutes,” I tell her.
She nods tightly. She’s a round--faced girl, more likely to be called cute than pretty.
Her grades, I can see, are decent but not stellar, which is par for the course among Meghan’s friends.
She’s painted her nails black. The nail polish is chipped where she’s chewed on the ends.
“Chloe said you asked her about Meghan,” she says, looking at me intently. I straighten up, taking my attention from the computer screen.
“I did,” I acknowledge. “I wanted to check in with her friends. Make sure you’re all doing okay.” I smile brightly.
“We weren’t friends,” she says flatly. My eyebrows crook in surprise. “I mean, she was my friend? But I wasn’t hers? If that makes sense.”
“Do you mean she was more attached to you than you were to her, or . . .”
“The other way around.” She folds her arms. “Meghan didn’t -really have friends.
I felt sorry for her. She was kind of weird and a loner, and I thought that was because other kids are awful, right?
And I’m weird. All the best people are weird.
So I figured, she can hang out with us. But I don’t think she ever actually liked any of us. ”
“What makes you say that?” I ask, leaning forward a bit.
She blows out a breath. “So, like. I told her something once, about my mom, that was supposed to be—-what’s the word, confident?”
“In confidence?” I ask, and Theresa nods.
“She made a joke about it in front of everyone. She could be mean. So. You know. I’m good. I’m worried about her, but it’s not like I miss her. I know that sounds awful.”
It sounds familiar. I tap my pencil against the desk, biting the inside of my lip. “Did she ever talk about Jenny Red--Hands?”
She makes an angry noise. “All the time. But I’m the one who told her about it.
There was this—-okay, this isn’t something you have to report, it was forever ago, like eight months?
This guy grabbed me on the bus.” She hovers her hands near her breasts to illustrate and rolls her eyes.
“So I told Meghan I should sic Jenny Red--Hands on him, and she’s like, who?
So I told her, and then, all of a sudden, it becomes her, like, thing.
And she won’t stop going on about how awful guys are and how she’s ‘embracing female rage’ and stuff.
But nothing ever happened to her, okay?”
That you know of, I don’t say. “Did she tell you that she’d seen Jenny?”
She laughs. “No? Because she’s not real? ”
“Right.” What is it about teenage girls that can make you feel like the most pathetic, loathsome organism to ever walk the earth? A sheer embarrassment to the evolutionary line. “Well, you’re swapped over to Mr. Robertson’s section, so you’re all set here.”
“Thanks,” she says, and flounces out. I drum the eraser against the tabletop, watching after her. So Meghan Vale was weird and standoffish and morbid and mean. And nothing happened to her, supposedly, and yet the behavior suggests otherwise.
I wish it didn’t sound so much like Janie.
And it’s true, I don’t know that Janie was ever hurt in a way you could pin down to one time, one story, one man.
But there’s a peculiar energy about certain girls—-the ones who move through the world carelessly and then show off the bruises where they’ve banged into things.
I did this to myself, they seem to be insisting, because if damage is self--inflicted, it means you chose it. It means you’re in control.
An email alert pops up on my phone. It’s from Tamara. Appreciation Dinner, the subject reads, and I let out a huff of dry amusement as I read through. Melinda Hill is hosting a dinner to celebrate the successful search for Bryson Lee, and I’m invited.
There’s a knock on the door. “Come in,” I say distractedly.
Dev enters, looking as dapper as ever. I blink at him, not quite processing his appearance. “You okay?” he asks.
“Dev. I—-yes,” I say, not sounding very convincing. I stretch a smile into place. “Just tired.”
“Immensely relatable,” he says. “So. About that second date. Still in?”
“I am,” I say firmly, before I can chicken out. At least Len can’t call me on that. I can do two things at once, I tell myself. “Later this week?”
“Just let me know. I have absolutely no life, which makes scheduling a breeze,” he says with a self--deprecating chuckle.
“Actually—Saturday, there’s this dinner I’m apparently supposed to go to,” I say. “For the people who worked on the Bryson Lee search. It’ll probably be terrible, but it does say there’s an open bar.”
“In that case, I’d love to,” Dev says. Then he examines me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Why?” I tuck my hair behind my ears. “Do I look like that much of a mess?”
“Mm. I don’t know. You seem—-you have that energy you get, right before you ditch us to go rescue wayward hikers,” he says, bouncing his weight back on his heels a little. “Like you’ve got somewhere you need to be.”
“I don’t,” I tell him. “Just tired, that’s all.”
“And four hours left before we can escape this cinder block palace,” he says. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. Just—-text me?”
“I will,” I promise, and then I’m alone again.
I stare at the door long after it closes.
I should listen to Len. I should forget Meghan, and go out with Dev again, and sleep dreamlessly.
In a few days, a week, my phone will chime with a text from Tamara—-a wandering child, a rock climber at the bottom of a cliff, Grandma walking out the back door in her nightgown.
People who exist and need to be found. People I’m supposed to be looking for.
Theresa’s records are still up on the computer. I back out. Meghan isn’t my student, but I still have access to her records. I call them up, and this time, I don’t look at the notes or the grades or her schedule, but at the contact information.
I don’t have a grid to search. All I have is Meghan’s life. Theresa thinks nothing happened to her. But that doesn’t mean it’s true.
I jot down the address, and close out the window.