Chapter 9
Pastor Keene hadn’t been wrong about the darkness away from town.
The narrow white beam from the flashlight on Anna’s phone barely reached her feet, and when she held it out ahead of her the ocean of darkness greedily ate it up.
She walked fast but not too fast, knowing that she was only a skip away from a panicked run. She took deep breaths to calm herself.
There was no one out here. No killer lying in wait.
No demon Farmhand coming to murder her because she’d summoned him so cynically the night before.
She gripped her keys tight, sharp edges pointing outward between fingers.
Even if someone did attack her, she was ready.
Elbow to the throat. Key in the eye. Run.
Occasionally, as her sneaker scuffed along the edge of the asphalt, she thought she heard the throaty growl of an old car engine somewhere behind, but no headlights broke into the night, and no car overtook her.
She paused, looking back, but could see nothing.
Surely Pastor Keene wasn’t following her home, crawling along somewhere back there with his headlights off.
Was he? Her stomach jittered. Six years since Lila Clarke and three years since Bonnie Buchanan.
He’ll be coming again now. That’s what Caroline had said last night.
Was there a creep out here waiting for his three-year murder fix?
She was being ridiculous. It wasn’t even that late.
Nine, maybe. There were still a few hours’ drinking time at The Shamrock, and why would anyone risk murdering a girl in a field when a pickup could come by any minute and hear her screams?
The dark and the quiet were freaking her out, that was all.
She wasn’t used to it. Standing tall, she kept on walking, focusing on the steady rhythm of her feet. She’d be home before she knew it.
She wasn’t sure what came first, the glow of light or the low strains of music.
It wasn’t a truck coming toward her, though—this light was static—and as she moved forward, she realized both were coming from the cemetery up ahead.
She got closer, her footfalls whispering carefully, and stayed in the shadows.
The light was thick, an industrial flashlight, maybe, strong enough to beat back the night, and it cast its beam across the headstones, making them a gaping maw.
In the brightness Anna could see a figure dancing among the dead.
She stayed in the shadows, watching. Who was that?
As the tune wafted toward her on the warm night air and she recognized the lyrics, she realized it was the same song the rebellious young woman in the diner, Melissa, had played on the jukebox.
That must be her dancing, alone in the cemetery at night.
Anna was tempted to squeeze through the gap in the fence and say hi, to see if she could dance too, anything to feel free of herself. Maybe even make a friend, tragic as that sounded. Someone who wouldn’t judge her. Someone who didn’t know. Someone maybe as fucked-up and angry as she was.
She had almost built up the courage to do it when suddenly there were headlights on the road behind her, coming out of nowhere as if the driver had been there all along but only just switched them on. The growl of an old gas-guzzling engine revving faster. Was that Pastor Keene’s car?
She hesitated, considering standing her ground and facing whoever it was, momentarily braver in Melissa’s proximity, but then an owl screeched overhead, startling her, and, knowing the house was only a few hundred yards ahead, she turned and marched toward home.
She didn’t want to run, a run would be admitting panic, but her breathless stride was as close to a jog as she’d come in a long time.
Once she reached the porch, she looked back, panting.
The car hadn’t followed her at all but instead stopped by the cemetery.
The headlights glowed in the night like a wild animal’s eyes, but she couldn’t tell if the flashlight was still on.
From here, she couldn’t hear whether the music was still playing either.
Had the pastor been following her home and then heard the music and gone to check out the cemetery?
That made the most sense, even if it was weird.
Maybe he’d followed to make sure she got back safely, but the idea of his car crawling along behind her with the lights off was creepy as fuck, and she was glad to be home.
She let herself inside and made sure the front door was locked.
She glanced sideways, but there was no Grandma muttering in the sitting room, and the kitchen light was on, dispelling any shadows.
Mom would have left only a little while before, knowing Anna was on her way, and she must have gotten Grandma settled in her room and Caroline put to bed before she left.
Grandma’s TV was loud coming from her ground-floor bedroom, but Anna didn’t go talk to her, instead heading straight upstairs.
The less time she spent with Grandma, the better.
Grandma had made it absolutely clear who she blamed for what happened in college, and it wasn’t the boys. Anna didn’t owe her anything.
She left the light off and went to her bedroom window to look out. There was nothing to see. Only darkness. Whatever had been going on at the cemetery, it had stopped. She watched for a few minutes longer, but the night remained empty, and so she flopped onto her bed and turned on the bedside lamp.
She pulled the folded piece of paper out of her jacket pocket—one she’d just taken down from the noticeboard when the pastor came out of the church, startling her—and carefully opened it up. The two dead girls smiled at her.
WHO WILL BE NEXT?
The paper felt like a totem and she didn’t know why she’d taken it.
Thinking of the pitch-black night and the long stretches of lonely barren fields, Anna shivered.
How shitty it must have been to die and be left out there.
Poor Lila and Bonnie. She touched each of their faces, then slid the paper carefully into her bedside table drawer and turned off the lamp.
She lay, thinking, in the silence of the darkness, before eventually, hours later, just as Mom’s car pulled up outside, her eyes closed and she drifted into sleep, where the thing that once happened to her tried to resurface—hands, heat, confused panic—but was pushed back down, the empty space still needed, required, insistent that the memory could wait.
It could wait again and again and again, night after night.