36
Mandy pulled up to Isla McLean’s cabin just in time to catch Detective Adams storming out the front door.
“Stop lying to me!” he yelled over his shoulder. He shot Mandy a hunted look, then went crashing into the woods, bearing what appeared to be a rifle in his hand.
Mandy quickly hopped out of her vehicle.
“What the hell was that about?” she demanded of Isla, who stood on the decrepit porch, arms wrapped around her waist for warmth. “And where did Adams get the firearm?”
Isla simply stared at her.
Fuck this.
Mandy marched forward and planted herself squarely in front of the woman.
“Austin just showed up at the town hall meeting, drunk as a skunk after two decades of sobriety and blabbering about hitting a deer and shooting at bears thirty years ago. Care to add to that, Isla? Because I think when it comes to the Dixons’ disappearance, you know way more than you’ve ever said. ”
“Austin Dekes?” The woman blinked. “The fire chief?”
“Did you see it? Who he hit, or shot, or whatever?”
Isla frowned slightly. If Mandy didn’t know any better, she’d almost think the woman was surprised.
“He thinks he killed the Dixon family,” Mandy pressed. “Did he? Because it’s a pretty shitty thing to let a man keep believing that if it isn’t true.”
“I don’t…I don’t honestly know.”
“Like hell. Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do.
You’re gonna stand right here, in the freezing cold, and answer all of my questions to my complete and utter satisfaction, preferably, for your sake, before hypothermia sets in.
Just to speed things along, I’ll start by telling you what I’ve already figured out.
First up, how do you find a witch in a well? ”
Mandy was already nodding along to the rhetorical question.
“I thought you were just being your usual irritating cryptic self. But you meant it literally, didn’t you?
How do you locate a well? A dowsing rod.
You searched for an underground water source utilizing a dowsing rod, common enough practice around here.
Then, when you finally discovered your target, you trained one of your father’s long-lost mongrels to lead others to the destination.
Seed the soil with Scooby snacks, make it a nightly game? I don’t even care.
“Which means you knew about the well. And that it really did contain a witch, of sorts. And you wanted others to know that truth as well.”
Mandy paused, took a breath. Isla remained still, her expression giving nothing away.
“The midwife, Rita. You read her diary—the journal you mentioned you lost for Janet Dixon to find, who lost it for Raquel Collins to find. You were the first to discover the hidden notes regarding what was happening that awful winter. Some kind of ritualized sexual assault. Murdered babies. A poor young woman accused of witchcraft but really a scapegoat. You left the book for Janet to find. But why? Why are you so vested in this?”
Then, when Isla still didn’t speak:
“It’s because of the babies. That’s all I can think of.
Rape has consequences, especially if repeated over and over again.
Some of the women became pregnant. And those babies, when born.
” Mandy closed her eyes. This next part was nearly unbearable in its horrendousness, but still had to be considered.
“Tell me. Tell me the infants weren’t, like, sacrificed or something.
” Because, so help her God, Theo had gotten his stupid satanic cult idea stuck in her head.
Isla finally cleared her throat. “In those days,” she stated roughly, “nobody knew about DNA. But even the early colonists understood bloodlines. If babies started being born with distinctive features, say the Dixon nose on the Joneses’ newest daughter, or the Carhart chin on the Douglases’ second son, people would talk.
And sooner or later, someone might figure it out. ”
“So the men killed the infants to cover their tracks? To ensure the newborns’ true parentage never became apparent?”
“When it comes to history there’s rarely a complete story, but that would make sense.
And yes, I had the journal first. I discovered it in my grandfather’s things with an attached note in my mother’s handwriting stating it should be preserved at all costs.
At the time, I didn’t understand why. Certainly, I couldn’t find any record of a Rita Louise Light in our family tree.
“It wasn’t until years later that I accidentally discovered the encoded entries. And many more years before I understood the significance, beyond the mere horror of such terrible happenings.”
Isla regarded her somberly. Mandy, however, still wasn’t satisfied.
“You could’ve shared the diary with the Masons of the world.
But you didn’t. Because as the last descendant of one of the five founding families, you were ashamed, or you worried others would be ashamed?
Not buying it. You side with the midwife.
I can tell just talking to you. You feel for Rita, she’s personal to you, that’s why you worked so relentlessly to locate the hidden well. Is she…is she your ancestor?”
A faint smile. “You were right in the beginning—it is about the babies. Those five poor newborns. Except it was only four. Rita faked the fifth one’s death, then secreted it away to a neighboring town. And that baby became my great, great, great ancestor.”
“Along your maternal line? You said the note was in your mother’s handwriting.”
“Without Rita, I would not exist.”
“And they killed her for it. Accused her of witchcraft, then sealed her alive in a well. Jesus.” Mandy was quiet for a moment.
The snow was coming down hard, accumulating across the brim of her hat, adhering wetly to her cheeks.
This was no time to be outside, not for herself, or for Adams, who’d apparently gone for a walk in the woods.
“Why not just share this story thirty years ago? Show the Masons of the world the diary and its hidden messages. Identify the secret well. Reveal the dark history of this town and be done with it?”
“And hazard them destroying it? By the time I connected all the dots and realized the journal’s full importance, I couldn’t risk such a thing.
History is already a series of lies written by men.
What happened to Rita Light, a fallacy perpetrated by an entire town, there are still many around here who’d be happy for that account to vanish.
Though keeping it to myself also started to grate, because others should know.
Rita deserved that much. So”—Isla shrugged—“I decided to make the journal available to Janet Dixon.”
“Make the journal available…?”
“I snuck into the Dixons’ house that August and hid the diary in plain sight. I knew she was a reader. I counted on her to take an interest.”
“Why Janet Dixon?”
“Because she’s not really a Dixon, of course.
She married into the madness. But her connection to the family would heighten her curiosity.
Unfortunately, I still didn’t know what I didn’t know.
For example, the boarded-up well: Rita could hardly document her own death.
It took me years of additional research to finally understand what might’ve happened to her, and decades to narrow in on a location.
But also, the diary turned out to be only half of the story.
It took the Dixon kids to discover the rest.”
“The lost treasure.”
Isla jolted slightly. “You know about the lost treasure?”
“Heard all about it. Come on, Isla, we’re both freezing our asses off out here. Once and for all, thirty years ago—what the hell did you do?”
Isla was silent for so long, Mandy thought the woman was once again going to stonewall. But then, eyes downcast, she suddenly clipped out:
“Dog found me. I could see blood on his fur. Lovey and I followed him through the storm, down to the meadow. I could see the house in the distance, but it was dark. The dog headed to the driveway.
“I found Dave Dixon first. He’d fallen across his younger daughter’s body.
In the rain, I couldn’t see what was wrong, but clearly both were deceased.
Dog kept moving. I followed. Janet came next, sprawled beside Violet, their hands nearly touching.
Then, Henry and William. Both face down in the mud. ”
“Austin really did all that?”
A shrug. “They’d all been shot. I think Dave had been carrying his daughter. She appeared to have multiple shots to her chest. The others, however, were a single shot to the forehead. There are very few people, drunk or sober, who are that good with a firearm.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“No. But just as I was turning toward the house to use their phone, I heard a noise. A low moan. It came from William.”
“The boy was still alive? And you didn’t call for help?”
Isla finally looked at her. “I could’ve. Maybe I should’ve. But I didn’t. What kind of person murders an entire family? Hunts them down on their own property, eliminating them one by one?”
Mandy didn’t have an answer.
“And what would that person do, if they discovered one person still lived? I couldn’t help the others. But William, he had a chance. I carried him back to my place—”
“Three miles? Half of it uphill?”
Isla merely shrugged. “Desperation is its own kind of gift. Thankfully the bullet had merely grazed William’s skull; I’m an experienced enough field medic. If your father was around, you could ask him. I’d patched him up a time or two, when he didn’t want others to know.”
Mandy opened her mouth to press, then snapped it shut. Now was not the moment.
“Once William was stabilized, I started to realize the enormity of the situation. Including…what kind of stranger would be wandering about in those conditions, happen to turn down a remote driveway, then decide to systematically gun down a family of six? Didn’t make sense.
Meaning, it had to be a local, someone who knew exactly what they were doing and why. After that, I reached a decision.”