Never smile at strangers

Haley pushed the front door open, and Erica could see two teenage girls and a little boy in the kitchen. All three were staring at them. She turned to go, but Haley grabbed her hand.

“Hay-wee!” the little boy screamed, cutting the silence. He rushed up to Haley, almost bowling her over as he latched onto her. He was a clownish-looking child with several awkward cowlicks and a pair of thick-lenses glasses that magnified his eyes. Seeing him, Erica wondered if he would suffer the same fate she had when she entered school. The torturous teasing from not belonging.

Haley laughed at the little boy.

“Why are you so happy? Did they find Tiffany or something?” the teenager with the brown hair asked, looking hopeful, a two-liter of Coke in her hand.

Haley stopped laughing.

Erica reluctantly took a seat at the oak table, next to the other girl. Setting her backpack beside her, she decided she would only stay a few minutes, then she’d go back to the cemetery, get her flip flops and poke around the woods a little bit before going home to work on her new book.

“Wawre’s Teefany?” the little boy asked, his words distorted for a child she guessed to be three or four years old. The boy cupped his hands over his small mouth and began ru

“Erica, this is my sister, Becky,” she said, forming her words carefully and pointing to the girl with the Coke. “Her friend Seacrest,” she said of the dark-haired girl, “and this little one here is Sasha.” She pointed to the little splotchy-ski

“Hi,” Becky said, a friendly smile on her face. Seacrest just glanced at her as if she were bored.

“Where’d you get the McDonald’s?” Haley asked her sister.

Becky quietly concentrated on pouring Coke into three glasses. She was almost as odd-looking as the little boy. Her features were mismatched. She had stringy, mouse-brown hair, close-set eyes and a nose that was too wide for her face. She looked nothing like her pretty sister.

“Becky?” Haley repeated, when her sister didn’t answer her.

“We got a ride into Chester,” Becky finally said, nonchalantly, handing one of the glasses to Sasha, who was now sitting upright on the floor.

“With who?” Haley asked.

Becky handed a burger to Sasha. “I don’t know. Just some guy.”

“Some guy?”

Seacrest snickered.

“Okay, we hitched a ride,” Becky said, flustered.

“You what?” Haley exclaimed.

“What’s heetched, Hay-wee?” Sasha asked from the floor, bread and meat in his mouth.

Erica shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She pulled at her damp t-shirt and chilly air rose between the cotton and her skin. She studied Seacrest who stood out from the wholesome Landrys, not just in appearance but in energy. She was dressed in tight-fitting shorts, a halter top and had a malevolent, unkind air about her. Seacrest must have felt her stare because she turned and threw her a pinched once-over before grabbing a glass of Coke out of Becky’s hand.

The exchange made Erica angry. It was déjà vu of the dreadful years of school. Being sized up. Being judged. But the fact that a girl so much younger could affect her that way left her feeling mostly ashamed of herself. Weak and pathetic. She reminded herself of a quotation that her mother used to whisper to herself after fights with her father: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. With that as fuel, she straightened in her chair.

“Stop it. It’s no big deal,” Becky pleaded.

“Hitchhiking is no big deal?” Haley snapped. Her eyes looked strange, unfocused. She was definitely wasted. She wavered a little then steadied herself against the table. “Don’t you know Tiffany’s missing?”

“Wawre’s Teefany?” Sasha asked again, this time looking very concerned.

“Seacrest does it all the time,” Becky insisted. She pointed at the girl. “And look, no one’s cut her into tiny little pieces.”

A bunch of excited words spilled out of Haley’s mouth, but only a few were discernable.

Becky gaped at her. “Oh my God, you’re drunk! That’s why you’re acting so weird!”

“What?” Haley asked, fighting for composure.

Erica didn’t want to witness anymore. If she wanted family discord, she could get it at her own house. Seeing an opportunity to slip out, she grabbed her backpack and headed to the front door. En route, she heard Becky’s voice rise further, the daggers still pointed at her sister.

“You’re so drunk you can barely talk! And you’re lecturing me? What a freakin’ hypocrite.”

Chapter 22

HE AWOKE IN a panic, his skin damp with sweat. It was two o’clock on Thursday morning. Five days since his kill and the law still hadn’t shown. Like those times years earlier, they hadn’t a clue.

He thought of the nightmare that had come to him as he slept. Of the night ten years earlier when he awoke to find his mother out in the yard.

His jaw tensed and he lay back against his pillow.

He ran from the kitchen window and slipped back into bed. Curling up beneath the scratchy blanket, he squeezed his eyes shut. He’d been dreaming, he told himself. It had been a nightmare, nothing more. His heart was pounding only because it had seemed too real. His mother was lying drunk in bed where she belonged—not out in the rain—and he was here in his bed, warm. . . and reasonably safe until daybreak.

A branch outside tapped at his window as though it were a frail finger, vying for his attention. Tap, tap. TAP! Tap, tap. He slipped lower in the bed and grabbed his knees.

The bedroom door swung open, slamming into the wall. “You try to lock me out, cher?” his mother snapped, her tone dangerous. “Next time it might help if you lock the front door, too!” She ripped the blanket from his bed and peered down at him, her breath fiery with whiskey. “Get up!”

Cool water dripped from her body, onto his pale face and neck. Bony fingers seized his wrist. “Get up and help me!” She yanked him out of bed.

Out back, the rain fell in sheets, soaking his bare skin and underwear. He peered down at a half-naked man who lay on the ground, his face covered in blood.

The man’s eyes were closed, his jaw opened at an odd angle. He was wearing only a white undershirt, the bottom of his body naked.

His young eyes moved quickly, taking in the hairy, bloated belly, the stumpy legs. Then his gaze returned to the man’s face.

His mother pressed her fingers against the man’s neck, her eyes filled with something evil. After a moment, her head jerked up. “Take off that underwear!” she barked, her Cajun accent as thick as the sticky Louisiana night.

Reluctantly, he slipped out of his wet underwear.

“Now grab his wrist. The left one,” she demanded.

He bent and reluctantly touched the man’s wrist. “Is he dead?”

“I said grab his wrist, boy!”

For the next few minutes they pulled the man the hundred or so yards past the house, to the pond. As they pulled, something warm exploded inside his body. It formed first at his middle, then surged through his veins—a mixture of panic, fear and an odd exhilaration, a feeling that wasn’t entirely bad.

The sky cracked open above them and the man coughed. The boy dropped the wrist and stepped back. “He’s alive!” he screamed.

“What are you doin’? Pick up that goddamned wrist and pull!”

The man went still again, and the two pulled him to the pond’s edge. The rain had let up and the moon began to show through the clouds. Two water moccasins sliced across the murky water and slithered to where the old pirogue rested, belly down.

The boy avoided his mother’s eyes and focused on the snakes. He wondered if they could smell the danger that hung in the air, the stranger’s impending death. Death was a place he had dreamt about, wondering often if it was a better place than the one he’d known throughout his nine years.