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It came, charmingly, in the mail. My name and address on a coffee-stained envelope, and inside just one scrap of paper with A
But, over the years, I’ve developed a few contacts of my own. When I looked down at the scrawling red letters, cut across the paper like scabbed-over claw marks, I knew that it had to be a tip from Rudy Bristol. The theatrics of it. The gothic romance of the yellowed parchment. Like I was supposed to believe the ghost actually did it herself, etching her name in someone’s blood and sending it to me like a calling card inviting me to di
Rudy “the Daisy” Bristol is a hard-core goth kid from New Orleans. He lounges around tending bar deep in the French Quarter, lost somewhere in his mid-twenties and wishing he were still sixteen. He’s ski
I called him the minute I got his letter.
“Hey man, how’d you know it was me?” There was no disappointment in his voice, just an excited, flattered tone that reminded me of some kid at a Jonas Brothers concert. He’s such a fanboy. If I allowed it, he’d strap on a proton pack and follow me around the country.
“Of course it was you. How many tries did it take you to get the letters to look right? Is the blood even real?”
“Yeah, it’s real.”
“What kind of blood is it?”
“Human.”
I smiled. “You used your own blood, didn’t you?” There was a sound of huffing, of shifting around.
“Look, do you want the tip or not?”
“Yeah, go ahead.” My eyes were on the scrap of paper. A
“A
“By who?”
“Nobody knows.”
“How?”
“Nobody really knows that either.”
It was starting to sound like a crock. There are always records, always investigations. Each drop of blood spilled leaves a paper trail from here to Oregon. And the way he kept trying to make the phrase “nobody knows” sound creepy was starting to wear on my nerves.
“So how do you know?” I asked him.
“Lots of people know,” he replied. “She’s Thunder Bay’s favorite spook story.”
“Spook stories usually turn out to be just that: stories. Why are you wasting my time?” I reached out for the paper, ready to crumple it in my fist. But I didn’t. I don’t know why I was being skeptical. People always know. Sometimes a lot of people. But they don’t really do anything about it. They don’t really say anything. Instead they heed the warnings and cluck their tongues at any ignorant fool who stumbles into the spider’s den. It’s easier for them that way. It lets them live in the daylight.
“She’s not that kind of spook story,” Daisy insisted. “You won’t ask around town and get anything about her—unless you ask in the right places. She’s not a tourist attraction. But you walk into any teenage girls’ slumber party, and I guarantee you they’ll be telling A
“Because I walk into a ton of teenage girls’ slumber parties,” I sighed. Of course, I suppose that Daisy really did, back in his day. “What’s the deal?”
“She was sixteen when she died, the daughter of Fi
“A
“Some people think that it was one of the boarders that did it. That some pervert took a look at her and liked what he saw, followed her and left her bleeding in a ditch. Others say it was her date, or a jealous boyfriend.”
I took a deep breath to pull me out of my trance. It was bad, but they were all bad, and it was by no means the worst thing I’d ever heard. Howard Sowberg, a farmer in central Iowa, killed his entire family with a pair of hedge shears, alternately stabbing and snipping as the case allowed. His entire family consisted of his wife, his two young sons, a newborn, and his elderly mother. Now that was one of the worst things I’d ever heard. I was disappointed to get to central Iowa and discover that the ghost of Howard Sowberg wasn’t remorseful enough to hang around. Strangely enough, it’s usually the victims that turn bad in the afterlife. The truly evil move on, to burn or turn to dust or be reincarnated as dung beetles. They use up all their rage while they’re still breathing.
Daisy was still going on about A
“Okay, so what does she do, now?”
He paused. “She’s killed twenty-seven teenagers … that I know of.”
Twenty-seven teenagers in the last half century. It was starting to sound like a fairy tale again, either that or the strangest cover-up in history. Nobody kills twenty-seven teenagers and escapes without being chased into a castle by a crowd holding torches and pitchforks. Not even a ghost.
“Twenty-seven local kids? You’ve got to be kidding me. Not drifters, or runaways?”
“Well—”
“Well, what? Someone’s pulling your chain, Bristol.” Bitterness grew in the back of my throat. I don’t know why. So what if the tip was fake? There were fifteen other ghosts waiting in the stack. One of them was from Colorado, some Grizzly Adams type who was murdering hunters on an entire mountain. Now that sounded like fun.
“They never find any bodies,” Daisy said in an effort to explain. “They must just figure that the kids ran away, or were abducted. It’s only the other kids who would say anything about A
Yeah. I knew better than that. And I knew something else too. There was more to A
“I’ll look into it.”
“Are you going?” There was that excited tone again, like an overeager beagle waiting to have his rope thrown.
“I said I’ll look into it. I’ve got something to wrap up here first.”
“What is it?”