Page 42 of Stay Buried

“But it’s so cold.” Aunt Margaret turned to Uncle Thomas. “Where will he go? Where do they all go?”

“I don’t know.” Thomas was staring at the wall now.

He looked lost standing there half dressed, his hair uncombed, dark circles under his bloodshot eyes.

“My mother’s out there,” Pearl said, looking blankly out the window at the blackness beyond.

“We’ve got to look for them,” Margaret said, getting closer to Thomas’s face now.

“We will. First, Frankie and I will go with Pearl and see what shape her father is in. Then we’ll organize a search party to look for Clarice and Emile.”

“And the knackerman,” Margaret added.

Thomas nodded. “And the knackerman.”

“You’ve got to find him first, Tom. You and Frankie. If the men from town find him, they’ll shoot him. People in town, they’re saying… they’re saying such terrible things about him. That he isn’t human. That he’s the one who made the horses sick. That he’s—” Aunt Margaret’s voice trailed off. She looked at me, took my hand. “Promise me, Frances,” she pleaded. “Promise me you’ll find that poor man. It isn’t his fault all this happened. He doesn’t deserve to be hunted down like an animal.”

“We’ll do our best,” I promised. I looked from my aunt to Pearl. “We’ll find them all—Emile, Pearl’s mother, and the knackerman.”

But what would we do then? Even if we found them and managed to drag them back to the house, what could we do to help them? Keep them sedated until the madness passed, until the sickness ran its course? And what was its course? Were they doomed to succumb to fever, to drown in their secretions like so many who’d caught the flu had last fall?

And if they died, would they then come back, rise up from their beds and slip off into the woods like terrible phantoms?

I reached up, touched the eye charm I wore on a leather cord around my neck, tucked safely beneath my nightshirt and coat. I remembered Charlotte Albone placing it over my head all those years ago, promising, “It will keep the bad dreams away. It will protect you from evil, waking or sleeping.”

“I’ll come with you,” Margaret continued. “I can help look. Let me get dressed, put on my coat.”

“No,” Uncle Thomas said firmly. “We need you to stay here. Get things ready like you said you would. Make coffee. Stoke the fires. We’ll be back soon.”

I went to my room to dress properly. My uncle gathered supplies from the surgery.

We all met up in the front hall, pulling on coats and boots; Pearl was pacing, eager to get back to her father, to continue the search for her mother. Uncle Thomas held his black medical bag. I carried asatchel with extra bandages and supplies in it.

“Margaret.” Thomas’s tone was grave now. “When we go, I want you to lock the door behind us. Don’t open it for anyone but me or Frankie, do you understand?”

“But, Tom, what if someone needs the doctor, what if—”

“No one but me or Frankie,” he cut in, taking her face in his gloved hands, stroking her pale cheeks. “Promise?”

“I promise,” she said. “No one but you.”

NINETEENASHLEY

October 17, 2016

They hauled their bags out of the pickup, ready to settle in at the Deer Run Motel. The rooms were as dark and dated as the office—musty-smelling, done in browns and golds, each with another splotchy, out-of-proportion Lorelei painting on the wall. The lampshades were decoupaged with pictures of deer cut from magazines. The furniture was heavy dark-brown wood, the mattresses lumpy.

“Not quite four-star accommodations, but I’ve definitely stayed in worse places,” Malcolm said. He’d just come into Ashley’s room after getting the last load from the car and going to grab drinks from the Coke machine. He plopped himself down on her bed and a small cloud of dust erupted from the duvet.

“Liz wasn’t exactly dripping with hospitality, was she?”

“She wasn’t that bad.” Mal was trying to smooth out a bump in the mattress now. “Just a little taken aback by yourLaw & Ordershtick with the photo of Mom.” He put on a serious TV detective voice: “Have you seen this woman? Look closely now.What was that about, anyway?”

“Look, we’re here. What’s the harm in seeing what we can find outabout what she did while she was here?” Ashley changed the subject. “Where are the sodas?”

“Machine’s out of order.”

“I don’t get how this place stays in business,” Ashley said. “I can’t imagine they get many people passing through. I mean, it sure looks like we’re the only customers.”