Page 45 of Stay Buried

Ashley set down her tepid mug of coffee.

“Are you all right, dear?” asked Lorelei. “You’ve gone quite pale.”

“Fine.” Ashley glanced over at Malcolm, who was sipping his awful coffee, unfazed. He’d never been good at remembering dates, birthdays, anniversaries.

The letter her mother had written to Gram from Boone’s Ferry was dated October 14. The town hall had burned to the ground the very next day.

TWENTYMINI

October 17, 2016

The gold watch was heavy in her hand. She had wound it, and could feel it ticking, counting down the minutes and seconds until the knackerman found her.

She traced the curly letters of the monogram with her finger:TEC.

“Who do you belong to?” she asked, as if the watch might tell her.

Mini was back upstairs in her room, looking through her window. For a second, she was sure she caught a reflection of someone behind her—a young woman with short dark hair, worried eyes, a heavy men’s coat. She was raising her hand as if reaching for something.

Mini blinked and she was gone.

But there was something else, something real, outside the window.

Two strangers were walking past her house. Mini knew the faces and names of every man, woman, and child in town, most of the animals too. But she didn’t know these two. The woman, with dark hair and eyes, looked up at her and waved. Mini jumped back from the window, hoping Mama and Papa hadn’t seen. When she dared to peekout again, there was a red cardinal on the wires just outside. He was looking straight into her window, staring right at her with shiny black eyes. He let out a cry that Mini swore was her own name:Mini, Mini, Mini. She opened the window to listen better.Come outside, he seemed to say.I have something to show you.

She looked at Shiloh on her bed. “What do you think?” she asked him. He gave a yawn and stretched. “Some help you are,” she told the old orange cat.

The cardinal called to her again.

She tucked the watch back into the pocket of her jeans and pulled on her old blue hooded sweatshirt. Then she locked the door to her bedroom (not necessary, she knew, no one would come looking for her, no one would be calling her down for supper), opened the window, and lowered herself onto the side porch roof. From there, she stepped over onto the old pear tree beside the house and climbed down to the ground.

This way, the red bird cried, circling around to the side yard, heading into the woods. Mini followed. The bird flew to a tree ahead, waiting, then once she’d caught up, he flew to the next tree. The woods were shady and cool and she was glad to be out of the house. She felt like she could finally breathe again for the first time since she’d seen the knackerman last night.

The path she was on was overgrown, hardly there at all, but Mini knew the way. The only creatures who used it much these days were the deer and coyotes. Mini saw signs of the deer, a little clearing off the path where they had bedded down for the night, piles of round droppings, tufts of fur left behind on trees, hoofprints. She saw signs of other wildlife too. A place where a bear had scratched up an alder. Coyote tracks. The skin of a garter snake. A large paper wasp nest, hanging high in the tree like a wicked balloon.

Mini knew the woods around Boone’s Ferry—the paths, thick stands of trees, the clearings and meadows—better than her own house and yard. And she felt more at peace, safer out here than athome or school. There were no people to deal with and puzzle over; no conversations to exhaust and frustrate her. She often thought perhaps the woods were her home, her true home, and the idea came to her now that maybe she should slip away and not go back. Just live out in the forest like some wild girl in a fairy tale. Build a little shelter of sticks and bark, eat roots and berries. She knew what was safe to eat and what was poisonous. She could gather acorns and boil them to remove the bitter tannic acid. She could collect cattails from down by the river, gather plantains, wood sorrel, and purslane from the meadow, search for late-season dandelions, lion’s mane mushrooms, fox grapes, chicory. And there were plenty of gnarled old apple trees to climb and search for the ones that weren’t too full of worms.

But winter was coming and the nights were getting colder. Food would grow scarce.

And the woods werehisplace too.

She could feel him out here. His presence was all around her.

She had been told her whole life that he was always watching. Watching through the eyes of the crow in the nearby tree; spying through the eyes of the fox and sparrow. Even the ants and spiders were watching, gathering information, speaking to him in their soft whispers. People said that the knackerman, even back when he was still alive, a flesh-and-blood man, could speak to all animals; he knew the language of bear and rabbit, horse and rat. Mini didn’t know if such a gift was possible, but sometimes she was sure she had a touch of it. That if she listened just right, she could understand what the animals were saying. Animals were easier to understand than people. You just had to listen carefully.

And sometimes, she believed, they came with messages meant just for her.

Like now.

The cardinal was up ahead of her and she could hear it saying,This way, little Mini, come, come. The bright-red feathers were lit up like a beacon against the dull backdrop of thinning trees.

She moved through the woods quietly, noticing everything: the pattern the shadows of the trees made on the ground, the woodchuck burrow with freshly dug earth at the entrance, the woolly bear caterpillar on the side of the path. She knew that there was a message out here just for her. The bird was taking her somewhere, had something to show her, something important, so she kept her eyes wide open, her ears pricked to the sounds of all the animals.

The watchtick-tick-ticked in her pocket. Was the watch a gift someone had left for the knackerman last night? Mini knew you were supposed to leave your best gifts: coins, rum, cakes, drawings, notes of thanks. But a watch? Especially an old one like this, a family heirloom maybe, that seemed too precious. Mini had never heard of anyone leaving him anything like that.

As she walked on, she wondered if it could be the knackerman’s watch. From a long time ago, back when he’d been a living man.

The watch was a puzzle. A riddle that felt heavy and solid in her pocket.