The May Queen Murders Read online

  “I follow you ’cause you’re gonna get yourself killed!” I scrambled up from the ground, a heap of blue skirt, black hair, and mud. If Heather didn’t think I could be ugly and gross, I could. “The signs say s-s-something terrible’s gonna happen, and it’s gonna happen to you, ’cause you don’t watch your back. Like you’re so damn special. Either someone’s gonna get pissed that you’re skanking around with the rollers or some roller might well do it, but you’re gonna wind up dead! M-Mamie always said to watch the signs—”

  “Enough! I don’t want you lookin’ out for me. I know what I’m doing. I don’t need Mamie’s warnings. They’re lies, Ivy, to make us afraid of what’s out there. You know what’s out there? People who think we’re freaks. You ain’t stoppin’ me. Now, get outta my way!”

  “Heather, I—”

  “Don’t talk to me. You’re a ghost. You’re so worried about who’s gonna die, who’s gonna be torn up like the dogs. It’s you. You’re dead. To me.”

  My heart plummeted to my hips. The noises I made while struggling to speak were pig squeals, hideous and awkward.

  Heather cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, Birch Markle, come and get me!”

  “I—I wouldn’t—”

  “Of course, you wouldn’t. That’s the point. I’m not letting you be my shadow anymore. Get a life. You can’t have mine.”

  Tears welled in my eyes, hotter than my flushed skin as they pooled in the corners before dribbling down my cheeks. My chest was tight. I couldn’t breathe. Every harsh word Heather spoke ripped through me.

  I collapsed against the brambles. Heather stalked off through Potter’s Field, trailing along a path into the woods. I didn’t follow. My body crumpled, the strength of my muscles gone and leaving behind my shivering bones.

  I shook so hard that I felt myself break.

  Night smothered the last crimson streak of sunlight. I had no lantern. At the cemetery’s edge, the trees jabbed the heavens. The bats winged from their roosts in the forest, their bodies taking flight like charred bits of paper.

  I didn’t go home.

  I spread myself flat on top of a grave, my back to the earth while the night swam. The dirt beneath me was chilled, but I scarcely felt it. I didn’t want to feel anything.

  There’d be no forgiveness, no mending of broken threads. Such things couldn’t be restitched.

  I hadn’t tried taking anything from Heather, her privacy, her love, her life. I wanted none of it. I wanted my own. There was no explaining that. She talked too fast and too angrily. Too frantic. Some panic was in her. But I was angry. Raging. My tongue, swollen with venom, hadn’t said the right things.

  Slumber weighed on my eyelids. Yet a tingle of fear rooted in the base of my skull. I shouldn’t have been out there. Something shuffled in the dead underbrush of the woods. I rolled to my side, half expecting to catch sight of a deer or coyote. There was nothing. Only the forest where Heather had disappeared. All at once, the time I’d lain in Potter’s Field stretched and removed me from the safety of home. I scurried to my feet and faced east, away from the horizon.

  “Heather?” I called.

  We needed to get home. Now.

  Something howled, something human screamed from so close I couldn’t tell if it was inside the woods or elsewhere. Every hackle on my neck raised and pulled my skin taut.

  I scanned the trees and graves for disturbance. All was calm. All was silent. A tense knot pulled at my gut. With dusk turning black, I couldn’t see more than vague outlines. I breathed in . . . breathed out . . . breathed in—

  A sweet, rotten scent hit my nose. The same odor had permeated the ground around Rook’s boots, my feet, reddened under the sky. I choked on the blood stench, gagging while I clamped my hands over my nose and mouth. I staggered between the grave markers. It was all around me, and yet where? Left by Bart’s remains? No, the rain had washed those away. This was fresher.

  The dead leaves quaked, and a muffled rustle-rustle-rustle like dusty bones rubbing together echoed. I watched the woods and stepped back.

  My spine pressed into something unmovable, something that shouldn’t have been there.

  I froze until the tremors came. My hand crept behind me, first through the naked air and then against something warm. Breathing. Something reeking of death.

  With a scream, I darted away, but someone grabbed my arm, flinging me to the ground. Blades of grass slipped between my fingers, and I heaved myself forward, half tumbling as my feet snagged on my skirt. Fabric ripped, and again I hit the ground, falling like a baby trying to run before it could walk.

  Closer and closer, a shape hulked between the graves. It held something long and snarled, a wig of some kind with stringy hair. It lifted the wig to place it on its head. Then the shape wiped its forehead. Maybe it was the tears in my eyes or moonlight that caught the shine of wetness on its hand, but the shape brought its hand to its nose and sniffed.

  It licked its fingers.

  Move, Ivy. If you don’t move, you’re dead.

  Mamie’s voice spurred me up from the ground. The shape growled, reached inside its cloak, and withdrew a knife, primitive, with a rusted blade.

  I ran. My hands wound into my skirt, pulling the torn fabric high so I wouldn’t trip. The shape would come and gut me as if I were the mutilated body of a deer after field dressing. Step by burning step, my muscles pried me up the cove to Promise Bridge. It wasn’t until I was halfway across that I heard myself scream.

  A lantern glimmered in the field. One lantern, then two.

  “Ivy! ” Violet yelled.

  I rushed to the glowing stars, wiping tears on my cheeks and the spit collecting between my lips. “Oh, God. V-V-Violet—”

  The lanterns came closer, and in the darkness, Violet’s shadowed face emerged first and then her sister Dahlia’s. Around Dahlia’s neck was a scarf like she always wore since being jumped by rollers, but still visible snaking up her jaw were deep pockets of flesh so thin her teeth and tongue shone through her cheek. Her attackers had cornered her in the chemistry lab. Chemicals left horrible scars.

  “Shhh.” Dahlia wrapped her arms around me. “You’re okay.”

  Violet slid out of her coat and nestled it around my shoulders. “Everyone’s been looking for you. Heather said she couldn’t find you.”

  “She lied!” I shouted. “S-she was with me and left! Someone was there, and it was horrible!”

  I glanced back to the bridge, to the graveyard of unclaimed dead beyond.

  No shape.

  No blood smell.

  Nothing.

  Whimsy was grazing not far from the bridge. Violet walked toward the horse and tugged her mane so she’d follow. My horse nibbled at my shoulder, and, exhausted, I patted her flank.

  “Come on,” Dahlia murmured. She reached for my hand, stopped when she noticed the dirt under my nails. “We’ll get you cleaned up.”

  We made our way through the field toward a path. The farther from Potter’s Field I got, the more I wondered if perhaps I had imagined the shape hoisting that awful wig high, licking its fingers. With my hand in Dahlia’s, the dirt ground into my skin, it was real.

  Heather had left me there.

  My bones hollowed. How could she? How could we be fighting like we never had before? This needed to stop, but how?

  I didn’t want to forgive. As terrible as it made me feel inside, my fury wanted to abandon her and see how she liked it.

  A warning bell rang out across the fields. Throughout the village, old iron bells were mounted on posts. It was an archaic though effective warning system. One bell tolled, and the entire trail lined with bells followed. Violet looked back at her sister and me, the flame in the lantern dancing inside the glass.

  “Something’s happened,” she whispered.

  We were close to the horse pasture, and the warning bells chimed all around us. Across the field, hillmen ran with their lanterns. They ran to the horses.

  I jerked my hand from Dahl
ia’s and sprinted to the pasture, pushing past the dozen men surrounding the fence. A horse’s scream ripped at my ears. Behind the fence, Journey lay on his side in the dirt. Patches of blood painted his blue-gray coat, and his legs scrambled to run, but he had no strength. His mane was gone. In its place was a slick, bloody track. The horse was scalped. His hooves thrashed, unable to get their bearings to hoist him, and he writhed, eyes so wide the whites shone.

  The shape in Potter’s Field had carried stringy, dark hair.

  “Somebody shoot him!”

  I didn’t know who’d yelled, but others echoed the shout. I twisted round and scanned the faces. Each was a blur, a look of revulsion, and a whispered prayer. Sheriff parted the hillfolk, and I spotted Rook a few paces behind him before I blocked him.

  “Thank God you’re safe,” he said, and held my wrists.

  “Don’t go any closer,” I begged.

  “What is it?”

  I winced as Journey let out a pained whinny. Rook’s jaw slackened. “No.”

  Gunfire silenced everything, or maybe the ringing in my ears deafened me. Some folks backed off to reveal the pasture. Journey was an unmoving mass. Sheriff stood over the still horse, rifle in hand, and stared at where I stood with Rook.

  “I’m sorry, son. There wasn’t anything we could do.”

  For a while, Rook sat with his knees tucked to his chest. He buried his face, but every few moments, he sucked in a deep breath. Someone found my father. He’d been searching for me along with Marsh. I answered Sheriff’s questions while my father crossed his arms and paced.

  “This is more than some pervert killing animals, Jay,” my father blurted out. “My daughter was attacked. She could’ve been killed!”

  Sheriff nodded. “I know, Timothy.”

  “Oh, shut it, Jay!” Marsh yelled. “We’ve heard Markle screamin’ for years, and you ain’t cared to do anything ’bout it till the dogs turned up dead.”

  A vein in Sheriff’s forehead throbbed. “You think I like knowin’ he’s out there? I was the last person to see him before he ran off, and we tried catching him then. My daddy put down the old laws to keep us inside at night even when folks laughed at him. Maybe I should’ve kept his laws when I became sheriff. But as of now, I’m puttin’ patrols on the roads and layin’ down an official curfew. No one goes out after dark.”

  Rook sniffed and lifted his face from his knees. “I heard the stories, but I never believed he was still out there.”

  “You don’t mess with a madman like Birch Markle,” Marsh said.

  Sheriff nodded his head in agreement. “I’ll send more men. Before he follows his old killin’ path. He started with animals, and I don’t need him movin’ to some pretty girl. Not with May Day a-comin’.”

  “No,” Papa barked. “We ain’t doing any May Day.”

  “Iris took it to council, and I can’t argue it or I’m outta my job.” Sheriff glanced in the direction of the woods. “Even if I ain’t found Birch yet, I know what happened with him and Terra better than anybody in the Glen. You trust anybody else?”

  Papa kicked a fence post. “No.”

  “All right, then. If keeping my head down when the council says they want a May Day is what I gotta do, so be it. May Day’s happening, and we’ll pray hard Birch Markle stays away.”

  Papa approached where I sat with Rook and offered me his hand. I waited, not wanting to go but not wanting to linger outside while the death smell worsened, and after a moment, Rook waved me off. Papa hugged me, his broad palm spread across the back of my head. “I’m takin’ Ivy home,” he said to Sheriff. “My daughter’s not gonna be another victim, and you better do something about this before someone else gets hurt. Or worse.”

  Before Papa ushered me away, I stopped beside Sheriff to ask, “If you find Birch, what’ll you do with him?”

  His lips pursed. “We’ll do what we should’ve done twenty-five years ago. We’ll put an end to his madness.”

  Chapter Eight

  His sister did what she had to—had Birch hauled down to the storm cellar by some of the young men. Seemed like he was gone, but we was just prayin’ he’d never get out. Then he did.

  Two days after Journey’s death, I sat in a pew in the Glen’s church. My family never sat too near the front, always by a window so Papa could look outside during Pastor Galloway’s sermon. Pastor wore a troubled expression. Nothing in the church was real ornate like I’d seen in art books—just a plain table and cross on the wall. Dried wheat in some milk cans were all the decoration. Sometimes in fall, when we prayed the harvest would keep us through winter, there were cornstalks bound together, and Heather and I taught the little ones to make crosses from the husks to hang above their beds.

  To have faith in the Glen was to know the old ways. Superstition and harvest rituals went back in our blood longer than the body of Christ. Mamie said any pastor preaching to us accepted that we had ways that were unwritten in the Good Book but nevertheless kept us close to God. If God created nature, then reverence for nature was reverence for God. Townies didn’t get it, not with their trips to the city to attend the mega church.

  Mama reached forward to the pew ahead of ours where Aunt Rue sat with Marsh.

  “Where’s Heather?” Mama whispered.

  Aunt Rue looked over her right shoulder. “She has a stomachache and stayed home.”

  I didn’t believe Heather was sick. At supper last night, we didn’t speak, avoiding each other, but she was fine. Distracted and pacing and going between the living room and the door off the kitchen. She wanted out.

  She was out now, I was certain. She could fool everyone. But not me.

  I glanced across the aisle to the Meriweathers. Rook twirled his glasses around by one of the earpieces. So pale, a gauntness about his jaw, he looked as if he hadn’t slept since Journey was killed. At the end of a prayer, Sheriff nudged him to remember to say “Amen.”

  I was transfixed by his sorrow and, guiltily, the memory of his arms around me and his lips warm on my neck. Part of me knew it was wrong to think of such a thing during church, but it was a comfort through the string of bleak days. Rook peered my way, and I couldn’t deny that seeing his fingers uncurl in a gentle wave made my pulse kick higher.

  We prayed for the animals. We prayed for Glen kind and folks outside. We prayed for understanding. They were words we prayed each week, yet the resonance chilled me.

  Pastor Galloway stepped over to the pulpit. He was older than Sheriff and Papa, but not nearly as old as Mamie or Rose Connelly or the other granny-women who had imprinted upon his spirit a love of land and God as a child.

  “Death is part of living,” he began. “What’s unacceptable is killin’ not for sustenance but perversion. The occurrences in recent days corrupt our land.”

  “So what do you suggest?” Dale Crenshaw piped up from the congregation.

  A hum of voices bristled in the church as families turned to one another to ask and offer suggestions of what to do with the madman in the woods.

  “I say we bring the county officers,” Dale spoke again. “We need peace ’round here!”

  Sheriff remained seated. His wife, Briar, moved to stand, but he stayed her and cleared his throat. “If you follow the curfew, you oughta be safe. Now, Dale, you know as well as everyone else that I’ve been to the woods myself, searching for Birch Markle.”

  Flint Denial stood and pointed at Sheriff. “But you ain’t found him! You’re as bad as your daddy was! Step aside and let in the county cops!”

  Some clapping and affirmations went up. Papa rose from his seat and ducked out of the church. Sheriff squeezed past Rook and hurried after Papa. I bunched my hands in my skirt. Violet shot me a sympathetic look as people patted her father’s shoulder.

  “We can hunt down Birch ourselves! We got rifles!”

  “Set out some bear traps and catch ’im that way!”

  “We need a different sheriff! Jay’s too weak!”

  A wild energy mounted
in the congregation, one ready to overthrow the order we’d always known. What would happen to Sheriff and the Meriweathers if people no longer trusted him to protect us? What would happen if we brought outsiders to the Glen?

  Pastor banged on the pulpit, and the scattering voices drew to a hush. He waited until all eyes were upon him. “What’s happenin’ here is unnatural and must be stopped. Scripture instructs us, ‘You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it.’”

  The dissent in the congregation remained, voices rising up to call for a hunt. I lowered my head and covered my ears to block the sound of madness.

  Sunday was our night for dinner guests. I lit the oil lamps and set out dishes for my family and Heather’s, along with the Meriweathers. The scent of arroz con pollo— chicken roasting until it nearly fell off its bones and rice seasoned with peppers dried the previous year—filled the small house. Briar brought a loaf of friendship bread, the starter for it begun in our families long before the Glen’s creation, before the Templetons and Meriweathers left Appalachia, before they left their old country.

  It was daunting to have so much history between our clans.

  I was setting the table when a hand covered mine. I clutched the silverware tight as I looked Rook over. His eyes were tired, his hair rumpled. He must not have noticed that he’d mismatched the buttons on his shirt. Or he didn’t care.

  “You still ain’t sleepin’,” I remarked.

  “I’ve tried,” he replied. “Mama went to Granny Connelly to get some valerian root. We’ll see if it helps.” He motioned toward the silverware I held. “Can I help you finish?”

  I divvied out half the settings. We worked with little noise other than the clinks of metal against the stoneware dishes. Even if we didn’t speak, if he was tense and exhausted, I still felt an easiness being beside Rook. I didn’t have to hide what I felt about him.