CHAPTER EIGHT

Everyone has seen the news.

Bailey’s social media pages are flooded with comments.

Please come home!!

Praying for you…

Jade and I are tagged in some of them. Thinking of you guys. Stay strong! Messages of support, from the dance team girls to underclassmen I don’t even know.

Bailey has suddenly become the most popular person in school.

I’m in bed, compulsively refreshing the news story about her disappearance on my phone. The TV spot was useless—just a flash of Bailey’s school photo, then a selfie pulled from her profile picture. A plea for anyone with information to call a special tip line the sheriff’s office has set up.

The news story doesn’t tell me anything I don’t know. Police are still searching for Bailey Hammond’s car, a blue Honda Civic. She was last seen wearing a gray scoop-neck sweater over black leggings. The sheriff’s office is treating her disappearance as suspicious.

There’s no mention of Bailey’s phone, or that someone wiped everything off it.

The cable box below the TV in my room says it’s midnight. There are footsteps outside my door. My heart climbs into my throat; Lauren’s voice saying my name in that tiny voice of hers stops me from leaping out of my skin.

“Come in,” I say, quietly. Lauren is silent as she crawls into my bed.

“You can’t sleep?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“Why can’t you sleep, Monkey?” It’s such a pointless thing to ask. Obviously it’s because of what’s going on with Bailey, or because we traumatized her in the barn. She pulls the sleeves of her pajama shirt down over her nails, which she’s bitten ragged and bloody. I pull her sideways into a hug.

Lauren looks up at me from under her dark lashes. “Chloe said she saw something.”

Chloe Strauss lives on the farm at the end of the road, on the other side of Sparrow Hill. She’s a year older than Lauren; Ashley told me the two of them played when they were little—play dates that always ended with Lauren in tears.

Once Emma and Lauren’s other friends stopped coming over, Chloe began popping up like a rash. The first time she came over while I was home, Ashley made the girls grilled cheeses for lunch; Chloe sat on the stool, pumping her legs back and forth while she watched Ashley cook, interrogating every step of the process. Is that Muenster? My mom uses regular cheese.

Chloe is a know-it-all and a brat, but worse, she’s a liar. The type of kid who will shamelessly make shit up so people will give her a moment of attention. I feel my body curl up defensively at the thought of Chloe saying something about my friend.

“What did Chloe say she saw?”

“She saw the Red Woman,” Lauren says. “Sunday morning.”

A jolt of panic. “Did you tell Chloe we went to the barn?”

Lauren shakes her head. “I didn’t. I swear. That’s just what she said.”

“What exactly did she say?”

Lauren gnaws her bottom lip. “She got up at three a.m. to feed Snowflake, and when she was going out to the stables she saw someone running from the barn on Sparrow Hill. She was covered in blood.”

It’s no different from every other alleged Red Woman sighting. And it smells like shit from Chloe’s stupid horse. “Why was she up at three a.m.?”

“She and her dad had to drive all the way to Minnesota to meet the man who bought Snowflake. You can ask her. She’s not lying.”

Lauren had mentioned that the Strausses had decided to sell Chloe’s beloved horse. Chloe very well could have been in the stables early Sunday morning like she said.

“If Chloe saw a bloody woman running around Sparrow Hill, why didn’t she call the police?”

Lauren frowns, her bottom lip jutting out in protest. “You’re not supposed to tell anyone if you see the Red Woman.”

“Well, then it wasn’t very smart for her to tell you.” I feel my patience thinning. There is something else nagging me—the way the creepy-ass woman at the spiritualist shop had looked at me.

“Hey. If Chloe really saw something, she should tell the police,” I say. “It could help find Bailey.”

Lauren gnaws the inside of her bottom lip. “Everyone is saying she’s dead.”

I remind myself that my sister is thirteen, and not completely a child. “She might be.”

Lauren tucks herself into me. “Do you think—do you think it has something to do with the footsteps outside the barn?”

I swallow. “Laur, Jade and I checked. There were no footprints. I think the wind was playing a trick on us and made us hear things.”

Lauren looks unconvinced. “Can I stay in here tonight?”

“Your mom might think it’s weird if she finds out,” I say. “She’ll get really worried, and might figure out what we did.”

“She won’t find out. Please.” Lauren blinks; there are tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. “I can see the barn from my room. I’m scared.”

“Okay.” I give in. I can’t stand to see her so upset. “But only tonight.”

Lauren plops her head on my shoulder, relieved. I feel hollowed out—it takes all the energy I have left to pull her closer to me, to comfort her.

I don’t have the words she needs to hear—that whoever took Bailey can’t hurt us. Because I’m not so sure I believe it anymore.

Go back to the barn.

I sit up, my back rattling the headboard. Hand to my chest; my heart’s beating like a lab rat’s. Lauren is gone. She must have gone back to her room before Ashley woke up.

Upstairs, I hear the dull roar of Ashley’s hair dryer. The cable box says it’s 5:45 a.m. Through the slits in my blinds, I see that the sky has lightened to a pearly gray, which means snow is threatening.

I creep out of bed. Leave my light off in case Ashley comes downstairs for breakfast. I root around in the dark for my running shoes, realize the snow is too deep, and opt for my clunky boots instead. I zip myself into a fleece and pull my clava over my face. I used to joke to Andrew that his made him look like Bane from Batman, so of course he got me one for Christmas. Now, I can’t imagine going out in the cold without it.

I move the fleece from my ear and open my door, slowly, listening for the hair dryer upstairs. When I hear it, I slip down the hallway and out the front door.

The trek up Sparrow Road is unforgiving, and I’m still half a mile from the hill itself. I feel the incline in my thighs. I start to warm under the layers I’m wearing. I peel my clava off and stuff it in my jacket pocket.

The sun is coming up over the hill. There’s rustling in the larch trees above me, followed by clacking. I look up in time to see a gray-and-white owl take off, wings stretched wide.

I’m sweating by the time I reach the top. I unzip my coat and give it a flap, desperate to get some ventilation. My cheeks sting from the cold. I pick my way over pine needles and cones, veering as far right as possible to avoid the clearing several hundred feet from the barn.

They razed what was left of the Leeds House and planted spruce trees—seven, one for each member of the family—that form a macabre circle.

The barn rests behind the trees, where the house once stood. Gold light streams through. For a moment I can’t believe that this is what we’re all so afraid of; right now, with the sunlight spilling onto the snow, washing the walls in amber, the Leeds Barn looks stunning.

A shiver cuts through me. I don’t know what I came here looking for. Maybe I just needed to see it in the unthreatening light of the morning.

Go. The snow comes up to my ankles, seeping through the tops of my boots. I wince, but I don’t stop. I step through the entrance of the barn.

The boards creak under my feet. It feels as if the barn is one heavy snowfall away from collapsing completely. I shield my eyes from the sun streaming in through the gaping hole in the ceiling.

The circle of tea lights from our séance is still in the middle of the room. The sight of them makes my stomach fall to my toes. We left so many traces of ourselves here.

There’s a flash of something by the window at the back of the barn. Probably the light playing tricks with my vision. I swallow and step forward, my boots rustling the hay scattered on the floor.

My heartbeat picks up. Closer, closer. I blink, hard, trying to wipe the sight from my mind. It can’t be real—I must have spooked myself into seeing it.

I open my eyes, and it’s still there. A rust-colored streak on the wall next to the window. One that definitely wasn’t there Friday night.

A blood smear.

I step back, hand covering my mouth, and a loose board below my feet collapses. I go down, hard. The hay around me is dotted with dried blood. A strangled yelp of fear slips out of me. I dig my heels in and push myself away. Scramble until I’m standing, and then I’m running to the door.

Outside I tear a glove off one hand with my teeth and root around until I find the card in my jacket pocket. Deputy Eileen Knepper, Broken Falls Sheriff’s Department.

The line rings and rings. I look at my phone and consider hitting end call. I shouldn’t be here.

“BFSD, Knepper.” A gummy sound fills the line. I picture her eating breakfast, something like oatmeal. “Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to?”

“This is Kacey Young. Bailey’s friend—”

“Of course! We spoke yesterday. Everything all right?”

“Um, I don’t think so.” I press a hand to my chest. Breathe. “I’m at Sparrow Hill. I went inside the barn, and there’s blood in there.”

The line falls silent. I feel that word crackle between us. Blood.

Knepper’s voice sobers. “How much blood?”

The sound of a twig snapping. I whirl around. Nothing there.

“Kacey, you there?”

“Yeah. Um, there’s a…smear of blood. It’s dry.”

The line falls silent. I hear clacking, at a keyboard, before Knepper speaks again. “I’m gonna need you to just simmer while I send someone over, okay? Can you head back down the hill for me? Wait by the road?”

Something glints at my feet, catching my eye, and I bend down for a closer look. The pendulum. Bailey must have dropped it on our way out the other night. I pick it up and put it in my jacket pocket.

“Yeah,” I tell Ellie Knepper. “I can do that.”

One hand on the pendulum in my pocket, I go back into the barn, pick up the abandoned tea lights from our séance, and take them outside. I bury them in a drift of snow under the closest tree.

I’m at the bottom of Sparrow Hill. The sun is at a forty-five-degree angle to my face. A flock of geese fly overhead, their honks volleying back and forth. I’ve been standing here for a while. I thought about going home and waiting for the police there, but Ellie Knepper said not to move.

My phone says it’s almost seven. No messages from Ashley or my dad. I picture Ashley over the counter at Milk & Sugar, licking the pad of her thumb and counting out change to start the register off. She didn’t even notice I was gone when she left for work. She must have thought I was still sleeping after a night of worrying about Bailey and didn’t want to disturb me.

The crunch of tires on snow. A sheriff’s cruiser bumps along, hugging the shoulder even though Sparrow Hill is a one-lane road. As it gets closer I can make out a walrus of a man with a white-blond mustache behind the wheel.

He cuts the engine. Pours himself out of the car and makes his way toward me.

“Sheriff Bill Moser.” He sticks out an enormous gloved paw.

The sheriff. I called the sheriff away from the search for Bailey.

“Kacey Young.” I shake Moser’s hand.

Bill Moser frowns. “I thought Ellie said Ashley Markham’s daughter called.”

“I’m her stepdaughter. Different last names…”

Moser turns pink. “Well, let’s see what we got here.”

Moser starts the trek up the hill and I follow, keeping a polite pace alongside him.

“So,” he huffs. “How old are ya?”

“Seventeen.”

“Ah, so you’re a junior.”

“Senior.”

Moser stops to take a breath. “I got a great-niece your age, goes to BFH. You know Bridget Gibson?”

I nearly trip over my feet. Suddenly it’s clear why Ellie Knepper seemed hell-bent on not discussing Cliff Grosso. He’s the sheriff’s great-niece’s boyfriend.

“I know Bridget,” I say. “She’s in my grade.”

“So. Whatcha doin’ all the way out here, alone? Considering what’s going on.”

A warning flares in my brain, telling me not to say anything about Chloe Strauss and the bloody woman. “Morning walk. I live down the road.”

Beside me, Moser wheezes. “Ya walked all the way up to the barn?”

“I thought I heard something. Like an animal. So I came up to look inside.”

I can’t tell if the sheriff doesn’t buy my story or if he’s asking all these questions for the sake of asking. He keeps his eyes on the ground. People here don’t like unpleasantness. They look their deer in the eye and apologize before shooting.

It’s likely why Moser hasn’t said anything about what happened up here all those years ago.

“The blood,” I say. “It’s like, smeared on the wall. And there’s some on the ground”

“Well, we’ll check it out.”

I hang back when we get to the top of the hill, watch as Moser sputters over to the barn. He leans against the entrance, catching his breath. “You know, there’s a lot of animals up here,” he says. “The blood could’ve come from one of them. You said you heard an animal, huh?”

The blood drains from my head. Lying was bad, but I’m already in it.

Moser collects himself. Enters the barn. His voice echoes off the walls. “Yup, lots of hunting animals up here. Foxes, stoats, ermines, coyotes. Even saw a bobcat once.” A beat of silence. And then: “Oh jeez. That’s not good.”

I’m sitting in the front of Moser’s cruiser. No need to freeze half to death, he said. Just promise not to drive off on me. A nervous chuckle. I’ve been sitting here for over an hour. Lauren and Andrew should be awake by now; if they’ve noticed I’m not in my room, they probably think I’m at the café working. I gave one of the deputies Ashley’s cell phone number, but he must not have called her yet.

The cruiser’s vents blast hot air in my face. I press a hand to the cool window. My socks are damp. The deputy Moser called for backup took my boots and wandered off, sealing them in an evidence bag. To eliminate tread marks, he’d explained. I’ll get them back eventually, he said.

I peel off my socks and slip my feet into the paper booties the deputy gave me. Drape the socks over the dash, hoping the heat from the vent will dry them.

Tread marks. We walked all over Sparrow Hill Friday night. The snow’s covered our footsteps outside, but inside the barn—the tread marks from my boots won’t match my story that I only stepped inside the barn today. If they find the other sets of footprints, they’ll know I’ve been to the barn before. With three other people.

But there should be a fourth set, too. From whoever left the blood there. The thought calms my nerves, although I can’t put my finger on the reason why.

Two more cars—one cruiser marked WISCONSIN STATE POLICE K-9 UNIT, one black with tinted windows—come down Sparrow Road. The drivers each do a three-point turn to park on the same side as Moser’s cruiser.

A uniformed man in a wide-brimmed hat steps out of the state police cruiser, accompanied by a woman who leads a German shepherd on a leash. When they pass by the cruiser, I catch a glimpse of the words on the dog’s orange vest: SEARCH AND RESCUE.

I fix my eyes on the black car. Its driver is faceless behind the windshield.

My hands fog up the screen of my phone. I wipe the sweat off the screen. Maybe I should tell someone why I really came up here—Chloe Strauss said there was a bloody woman. Even if Chloe was full of shit, there’s real, actual blood in the barn now.

The slamming of a car door jolts me. The driver of the black car finally steps out: a man, probably midforties. Curly hair slicked down, cheekbones for days. He’s wearing a suit, no jacket. His gaze rakes over the scene, resting on the windshield of Moser’s cruiser. Making eye contact with me.

I shrink into the seat. Look down. There’s a lima bean–sized tear in the upholstery near my thigh.

Minutes later. Rapping at the window. Moser’s face, his breath fogging up the glass. He motions for me to come out. I hesitate. “That guy took my boots.”

“Oh. Yes, he did.” Moser makes a phlegmy noise. He waves the man in black over to us. I turn in the passenger seat as Moser clamps a hand down on my shoulder. “Detective, this is Kacey Young.”

I didn’t know Broken Falls had detectives. But then, the man doesn’t look like he’s from Broken Falls. He doesn’t introduce himself. “Good to meet you, Kacey. Can you tell me what happened this morning?”

No accent there. Definitely not from Broken Falls, then. FBI? “I—told Sheriff Moser. I was out for a hike. I went up to the barn, and I saw the blood.”

The detective tugs a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket, holding eye contact with me as he slides a hand into one of them. A shiver rips through me.

“You’re aware there’s a girl your age missing?” The latex glove snaps against his wrist.

“She’s my friend,” I say.

The detective’s eyebrows lift. “I didn’t know that.”

The sheriff turns pink. “Well, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t either.”

I think I spy a bead of sweat above his mustache. I don’t like the way the detective is looking at me. “Bill, could you check to see how the road blockade is coming along?”

Moser frowns and putters off. When he’s out of earshot, the detective squats so we’re at eye level. “Kacey, I need to know, were you out here looking for Bailey when you found the blood?”

“What?” The sounds on top of the hill roll around in my head like pinballs. Shouts back and forth. Radios crackling.

“Kacey, look at me, sweetheart. I’m over here.” He waggles a finger in front of his face. I bite back the urge to swat it away. “Why did you come up here?”

“I just did. It’s quiet up here. Sometimes I come to get away and think.”

He nods. I can’t tell if he’s buying the grief-stricken-friend thing. “See, Kacey, if you have a reason to believe that Bailey might be up here, I need to know. You won’t be in trouble. You understand the most important thing right now is finding her, right?”

My toes clench in the paper booties. “Of course I know that.”

Barking, up on the hill. Frenetic, loud, found something barking. The detective acts like he can’t hear the dog, but I can see it on his face: the slightest quiver in his upper lip. “I’m gonna need you to sit tight for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

I watch the detective trot up the hill, meeting the deputy who took my shoes and two other officers.

The deputy says, loud enough for me to hear: “We called the crime scene unit from Madison to come swab the blood.”

One of the other officers, a woman, says: “You think it’s gonna match what we found on those clothes yesterday?”

My blood freezes. I forget I’m in paper shoes and stumble out of Moser’s cruiser. Yell over to them: “You found bloody clothes? Where?”

Three heads prick up. The detective turns to look at me, then back at the big-mouth deputy. Nice job, asshole.

“Kacey, why don’t you get back in the car so you don’t get frostbite.”

I can’t move. “I heard her—how much blood was there? Is Bailey dead?”

The detective drops his voice. “Please get her out of here.”

The deputy who took my shoes starts coming toward me. A flap of panic in my chest. Cornered.

“C’mon, sweetheart.” When the deputy grabs me by the elbow, something in me snaps. Everything I’ve been tamping down comes flowing up.

“Get the hell off me.” The voice doesn’t even sound like mine. It belongs to the ugly thing that lives in me. The creature that goes berserk when it’s cornered. One I haven’t seen since I left New York.

“Hey!” The deputy steps back, but he doesn’t let go.

I start to scream. “Don’t grab me—get off.”

More shouting—the other deputy, the woman, comes running toward us. Everything goes black—if I fight back, I’m going to be arrested for assaulting a police officer. I let my body go limp and I fall to the snow.

I’m not here anymore—I’m in my mom’s old apartment, I’m lying at the bottom of the stairs, and all of the fight is leaving my body.

“Get off her.” A firm voice.

Two pairs of hands release me. I regain my breath, numb to the cold seeping through my thin pants. Off to the side, Moser is watching me, his jaw open, his stoats, foxes, and ermines forgotten.

I am the only animal up here.