The May Queen Murders Read online

  The songs were old, from the mountains, and smoke muddied the blue dusk. Amid the banjo and tambourines, the cheer of hillfolk, the sun drowsied. A soft voice settled the noise, Heather’s, as her fingers plucked an acoustic guitar. I leaned against a maple tree and closed my eyes. I couldn’t stop hearing her.

  “Down in a willow garden . . .”

  My ivy crown itched, and I reached up to yank it away.

  “My true love and me did meet . . .”

  I ringed the crown around my forearm and spun it until some ivy split free and drifted to the grass.

  “There we sat a-courtin’ . . . My true love dropped off to sleep. ”

  Empty bottles piled up. The music and dancing continued, so much dancing. Rook busied himself entertaining Raven and the little ones by being a horse for them to ride. Small girls wove ribbons around the maypole with Heather and Violet leading them, everyone prancing and laughing.

  I was apart from it. Not sure where I belonged or wanted to be. I gave a halfhearted wave to Heather accepting embraces and kiss-kisses on her cheeks. Her gaze flicked my way, then a jut of her chin and a spin away. Her skirt rose and fell, the curls in her hair rose and fell, and inside, I fell.

  My father stayed back from the hillfolk, and I spotted him with Sheriff at the perimeter. I slipped between the crowd where Violet twirled between August and Jasper Denial until I was away from the celebration. I crouched near a trellis that’d eventually support sugar snap peas if the dead vines wrapping it were any indication.

  “They best not’ve made those bonfires outta peach wood,” I heard my papa say.

  Sheriff twisted around from his post and tipped his head. “I saw Mamie pickin’ over the fire piles at dawn, throwin’ out any cursed wood. She carried it to the river for cleansing.”

  “You see anything out there, Jay?”

  “Sun ain’t even full set. Woods are wide.”

  Papa rocked on his heels and scanned the trees, I suspected, for a shift in shadows, a crack of a twig, anything strange. “Some folks are sayin’ this is foolery.”

  “That’s the wine talkin’. They’re too relaxed and lettin’ down their guard,” Sheriff replied. “You know, Timothy, this is my job. You try and enjoy May Day.”

  My father gave Sheriff a pointed look. “Ain’t gonna happen.”

  Sheriff clapped Papa on the shoulder. Something unspoken floated between them, an ether of memory.

  A bellow rose up from the woods across the river, beginning low in pitch, then rising to yip, yip, yip. It cackled and screamed, a madman’s call. The echo chased shivers down my back and arms, my fingers gripping the trellis tighter.

  The celebration silenced. The dancing stilled. Only the spit and crackle of bonfires and whipping flames broke the paralysis. Sheriff took his lantern off his post and held it up to shine across the river.

  “Some loons, Jay!” someone yelled.

  Another dissenter joined in. “And a turkey!”

  There was laughter from some gathered, while others shifted and pulled together. It was birds, but what had sent them calling? No one knew what to believe. Who to trust. It was a bad root that spread infection beneath the earth.

  “What’re you doin’?”

  I pivoted to find Violet breathless from dancing. In one hand, she clutched a bottle of blueberry wine, burgundy liquid rolling around inside. She pushed in against the trellis.

  “Trying to find somewhere quiet,” I explained.

  She took a good look at Papa and Sheriff. She smelled of sweet wine. “My mama says Birch Markle is real. She remembers when he killed that girl. Now those dogs and Rook’s horse . . . Someone’s here.”

  Someone who used to be here and never quite belonged, according to the stories.

  Violet brought the lip of the bottle to her mouth. When she spoke again, a sloshiness mushed her voice. “What’d he look like?”

  I peeled away from the trellis, staying by the riverside. The water was reddish, as if bloody and poisoned. Violet handed me the bottle. The sound of wine lolling around the glass curves was tempting, and I drank the thick, berry liquid.

  “That bad, huh?” she asked.

  “Th-that bad,” I answered.

  My mouth sour from wine and bonfire smoke, I slumped on the steep peak of the bank, too aware of the celebration. Families roasted chickens, their skin crackling while the herbs rubbed over them burned with an odor like Mamie’s medicinal pastes. Our ancestors built fires where they danced, leaped over the flames, and used smoke to send up prayers for a good harvest, prayers for protection of land, animals, and folks.

  Mamie and her stories.

  I wished I knew the endings.

  Violet wobbled. “Dahlia didn’t come. She used to be like Heather, you know, outspoken and brave. It was taken from her. Heather ought to be more careful. She don’t want to end up like Dahlia.”

  “Heather don’t wanna be told to be careful,” I said.

  “You girls’ll be in trouble if anyone catches you down here.”

  I caught myself from losing my balance as I contorted to see Jasper Denial and two others from his side of the Glen. The girl was Star, and the boy was named Elm. I didn’t share classes with them, and they took the same route to school as Jasper. As such, I didn’t know them well.

  “Look what I got!” Jasper said as he showed off a crate filled with a half dozen bottles of wine.

  Violet poked him in the shoulder. “What’d you do? Sneak ’round and grab bottles from under folks’ tables? All I had to do was hit my family’s barn and the fermentin’ barrels. We got loads of Crenshaw claret, and I didn’t make myself into a thief, young Jasper Denial.”

  She grabbed one of Jasper’s stash, tossing it to me. I coiled my hand around the bottleneck. It felt strange to be among a group that wasn’t Heather, Rook, and—often enough—August. I looked between them to find Rook, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Y’all lookin’ for the madman in the woods?” Star asked, holding her lantern below her chin to cast eerie shadows across her face.

  Elm laughed and elbowed her. “Anybody who says they seen him’s a liar.”

  “You dummy,” Violet said, tipping her head toward me. “Consider your company.”

  I jumped as Star’s fingers glided over my shoulder. She stood over me, silhouetted by her gauzy dress and silver-blond hair. Her eyes were dark and sunken, wary as she looked me over. “He’s comin’ for you, Ivy.”

  I clambered to my feet and snatched up my wine with a growl. “Jackass.”

  I left. They laughed behind me, and despite hearing Violet scold them, I wove a path along the river. To get away. Clear my head. Every few steps brought my lips to the bottle. I walked and drank. Walked and drank. Blinking. Drinking. Swimming in my thoughts but not feeling.

  Don’t go out after dusk. The sky was at dusk.

  Don’t let yourself be alone. I was alone.

  I wheeled around to see how far I’d gone from the May Day celebration. The bonfire leached into the sky behind me, an amber eye against the darkening horizon. Metal clinking against itself—chink, chink, chink —caught my ear. I whipped back around and faced Promise Bridge. The wood planks bobbed up and down. Someone had crossed it. Someone I didn’t see.

  My mouth went dry, and I backed away a step. Go back. Find the others.

  Someone else found me first. Violet panted as she caught up to me and pressed her clammy palm to my wrist. “Ivy, I’m sorry.”

  The others were with her, sullen-faced in their lantern light. Jasper nodded. “Just takin’ the piss outta you. No harm, right?”

  I didn’t answer. Promise Bridge’s suspension rocked back and forth, enough that Elm noticed it.

  “You messin’ ’round on the bridge?” he asked.

  “Not me,” I answered.

  Elm and Star started toward Promise Bridge, and Jasper trailed after them, leaving Violet and me on the riverbank. She called, “Where are ya goin’?”

  “To find Birch M
arkle!” Star replied. “That’s what Ivy wants us to believe she saw, right? So let’s get him!”

  The lanterns Elm and Star carried were ghost lights glowing across the bridge, and from within the woods, more strange calls echoed on the wind. Violet clutched my hand as we stumbled after the others. They’d picked up their speed, running now, wild as they hunted a monster. The bridge rattled beneath my feet, and I clutched the chains to steady my spinning head. No matter how fast or slow I moved, a sensation built inside my skull like I might pitch into the water below.

  Violet let go of me. “We gotta hurry or we’ll lose them. We can’t be caught in the woods by ourselves.”

  I grabbed the post at the bridge’s end. My mouth, dry not minutes before, was now tangy. “I’m gonna be sick.”

  Violet hedged as the lights veered to the woods. “C’mon, Ivy. You gotta keep movin’. We can’t lose them.”

  I pulled myself up from hunching over, sweat above my lips. I shouldn’t have drunk so much. The others still carried wine along with their lanterns, and their laughter resounded from within the woods. Violet linked her arm with mine to hurry me along. The nausea let up after a bit, and I trudged down the path where Potter’s Field spread out under the wasted light of dusk.

  No one wanted this land, Ivy girl, Mamie once said. The unknowns return to dust in this here place. Tuberculosis and influenza patients, prisoners rottin’ away in cells. Folks who died alone with no one willing to claim their remains. Folks put ’em in pine boxes with only crossed arms and corpse money on their dead eyes. But the hillmen bought the land cheap, coaxed crops to grow from the clean side of the river there, and pretended it was better than the rest of the land. There ain’t any doin’ away with that boneyard. We don’t speak of it, but everyone ’round here knows we’re the undertakers of the unclaimed.

  During daylight, the graveyard inspired a hollow sobriety. But at latest dusk, the feeling of Potter’s Field was of tremendous loss, not of life, because all things died, but rather of the people of whom not even a memory remained.

  “Violet, where are you?” Star called.

  “We’re comin’!” she replied so loud and close that my ear ached. Her step quickened, and I had to keep up or risk being alone in the woods.

  “Someone’s here!” Elm yelled.

  We veered toward his shout. Crispy leaves blanketed the ground, and Violet and I ran together deep into the woods, a place where there was no trail. Running, running. We trusted the dim glow of lanterns ahead until we caught up. There, standing amid tree trunks and scrubby bushes, the others stared out from dark eyes and pasty faces. They weren’t laughing now. The boys, who carried knives when working out in fields, had them drawn. Star raised her lantern, and her voice trembled. “We found him.”

  In the middle of the cluster was a tall shape in hooded rags with arms surrendered to the sky.

  “Oh, my God.” Violet broke away from me and drew closer to Jasper.

  I crept along the clearing, using the bordering trees for support. My head rolled back to look above where the canopy of branches and leaves was strung with fabric, a web of paisleys and plaids, velvet and burlap, all knotted together. Skirts of Glen girls, remnant pieces from clothing loomed across the branches, haunting to see. Twine coiled around pieces of metal—spoons, gardening tools, knives—and tied around the webs to clink against each other.

  It was a collection.

  My eyes parched as if I’d stared too long at a fire. There was so much to see. Someone had made this place into a curious home. This was the place Sheriff and his men had found, the place where they’d set up a stakeout and never found another sign of Birch. Maybe he had other homes deeper in the woods, and God only knew what he kept there. But he was here now.

  “Monster!” Star shrieked and pointed.

  The shape was tall, taller than anyone else in the cluster, but he was also slender, with long, knobby digits for fingers and hanks of dirty hair creeping from his hood.

  Birch Markle, the madman in the woods.

  Jasper narrowed his eyes and flexed his grip on his knife. “Don’t run, or when we catch you, we’ll slit you in half.”

  Yet Birch bolted through the woods. Violet whipped back around to grab me while I struggled to hold my footing against the tidal wave of long hair and skirt and shouts of “Monster!” from her and the others.

  “Vi,” I hollered over the yells, “st-stop! This is insanity!”

  “He’s the mad one, not us,” she said. “We’ll catch him, cut him up to feed the pigs, and no one’ll be afraid again.”

  There was murder in Violet’s voice, a swept-upness. This chaos had to stop. Chasing him down and whatever else they had planned wouldn’t change what he’d done.

  I yanked my arm from Violet’s hold and charged back the way I prayed I’d come into the forest. I was in so far I wasn’t sure I’d know my way out during full day, let alone half night. My vision was hazy, my steps sloppy. I ran faster, then crashed against someone barreling along the path. My backside thumped the earth, and I lay motionless, everything around me spinning so I was uncertain of down from up.

  “Ivy?”

  Rook. He was close, but I couldn’t find him to focus.

  His skin was rough as he took my wrist. He held a lantern. “I was by the riverside and heard noise.”

  “They’re chasing him,” I said, breathing heavily.

  “Who?”

  “Birch Markle. They found him in the woods!”

  Rook yanked me to my feet. “Show me where.”

  I waved in the direction from where I’d come. The movement left me hanging on his vest, hoping not to fall.

  “You’re drunk. You should go home.”

  “Not until we stop them,” I said. “Come, quick!”

  With a growl, Rook dragged me down the path. The swell of dead leaves rolled with the wind. The ting-ting-ting of broken glass wind chimes and old spoons swaying above broke the silence. Ahead, there was a glow.

  “There,” I told Rook. “Follow that light.”

  Birch Markle could’ve killed me in Potter’s Field. He didn’t. The others could kill him now, but I wanted him to atone for what he’d done. He couldn’t be punished if dead.

  The others’ lanterns grew brighter until we reached a gap in the trees where a body lay on the ground, a rock near his side. His arms were wrapped around his head as if he tried to block a hit. Near the front of the cluster, Violet scrambled forth to pick up a stone.

  “Stop!” Rook ordered.

  Violet glared at him before her arm arced back. The stone sailed the distance to thud against the cloaked shape’s hip. Jasper held his knife. Elm and Star threw what they could—rocks, empty wine bottles, sticks. Maybe because of the dark, maybe because they’d been drinking, the majority of blows missed their target.

  Birch lay still on the ground.

  “You can’t kill him,” Rook shouted.

  “The hell we can’t,” Jasper replied. “Comin’ in the Glen, killin’ those animals, attackin’ Ivy. We ain’t afraid no more. And where were you? Some sheriff you’ll make someday.”

  Rook shoved Jasper. “Fuck you!”

  The throwing slowed as Rook put himself between the others and Birch. My skin was too tight as I stared at the hand with knuckles scraped raw that crept out from the cloak. Rook wound his fingers into the hood covering Birch’s head and yanked it back to reveal dirty blond hair stained with blood.

  Milo.

  Chapter Ten

  It’s said there weren’t no animal Terra couldn’t tame. By the time Birch Markle got to her, he was more animal than human, but he wasn’t one to be tamed.

  Lemons and thyme scented the Meriweathers’ kitchen. The lemons hung from a potted dwarf tree, and bundles of thyme and other herbs dried on a hook were suspended from the ceiling. Neither fragrance masked the antiseptic odor of iodine wafting from the room where Milo Entwhistle lay on the coffee table.

  Mamie told me living rooms were once kn
own as death rooms, back when funerals were a home matter. After mortuaries came into fashion, there was no need for keeping bodies on ice at home, and the death room was rechristened the living room.

  Rook had convinced Violet and the others they were wrong about Milo. He was just a roller boy from the trailer park. We shared classes at school. Birch Markle was somewhere else, but that fear from a collective childhood nightmare nearly got Milo killed. Until the others scattered, terrified because of what they’d done, I whispered in Milo’s ear to play dead.

  Because I wanted to know why he’d entered the Glen.

  Because I thought him many things, a roller, a dealer, maybe a killer.

  Because he’d come for Heather in the woods.

  I ran my thumb around my empty mug’s rim, the second tea I’d guzzled to heal my wine headache. My brain clanged against my skull like driving nails through a horseshoe.

  Rook joined me in the kitchen. He unclipped his suspenders before fidgeting with his shirt buttons, a swift glance my way before continuing to unbutton. He tossed aside the black fabric and his undershirt before grabbing a fresh undershirt from a wicker basket of folded clothes. I retrieved the shirts, untangling the crumpled fabric to find it wet. My fingers were red. “Were you hurt?” I asked.

  He fixed his clean undershirt and replaced his suspenders. “No.”

  “But there’s blood.”

  He pushed his fingers back through his hair, loosening the dark strands until a few fell across his brow. “Blood ain’t unusual ’round here. I got into some when I stopped the others from beatin’ that guy.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Milo had left both our hands red.

  Rook opened the wood stove and tossed in another log. The nights remained on the cool side of pleasant, and it’d be a few weeks yet before we could let the night fires turn to ash.

  “You think Milo killed those dogs? Journey?” he asked.

  “They think he did,” I replied.

  “That doesn’t tell me what you think.”

  “What I think don’t matter,” I said.