Page 31 of Stay Buried

“We wait,” Mama said. Mama hadn’t looked her in the eyes since they’d come inside. Her voice was icy and far away.

“Maybe we should run,” Mini suggested.

Mama shook her head. “There’s no running from the knackerman.”

Maybe Mini should go off on her own—after all, it was her he wanted, wasn’t it? If she left, her family might be safe. But where could she go? Everything she knew, everything she loved, was here.

Running wasn’t an option. Not really. She wouldn’t make it far. He’d find her. Hunt her down. Once you got the mark, it was over.

She knew the stories—everyone in town did. People who’d disappeared in the night never to be seen again. Whole families even. Her best friend, Bea, had an older cousin who’d defaced the knackerman’s grave years ago, before Bea and Mini were born. He got the mark and two days later he was just gone—poof, like he’d never existed. The next day, his family’s house burned down.

And Jamie Wells, who used to work in the town garage, he didn’t leave any gifts for the knackerman, even went around telling people he knew there was no knackerman, not really, any more than there was a Santa Claus. Everyone said he got the mark and the next day, he was found floating facedown in the widest part of the river down by the old waterwheel.

Then there was what happened to Sad Willy’s wife. That was the worst story of all; one so bad Mini couldn’t bear to imagine it.

What would he do to Mini?

And it wasn’t just her, was it? She knew that her whole family would suffer for what she’d done.

Finn had gone up to his room. Papa sat smoking by the fire, rolling one cigarette after another, his eyes on the flames. Mama did not make breakfast, only brewed coffee, which she carried over to Papa, but his cup went untouched.

“I’m sorry, Papa,” Mini said for the hundredth time, but her father didn’t answer her, just spat into the fire. He hadn’t spanked her. She almost wished he would—that was usually the way things went when she’d done something she shouldn’t have: Papa would bring out the belt, then send her to her room.

This punishment, what was coming, was so much worse than that.

It felt thick and heavy around them, like the air just before a bad storm.

Tick, tick, tickwent the watch in her pocket.

Tears ran down Mini’s face. She made a strangled gulping sound.

She realized that, in some way, she was already dead to her parents.

She slipped up the stairs to her room, moving like a ghost through her own house, no one seeming to notice her anymore. She found Shiloh there, purring on her bed. He looked up at her with his green eyes as if to say,Where have you been?At least she wasn’t a ghost to him. He slept on top of her each night, and here he was, still waiting, wondering why she’d never come to bed last night. He was a big orange tabby cat, old and missing a few teeth. Mini threw herself onto the bed, pushing her face against Shiloh’s soft fur and crying. “I’ve done a terrible thing,” she told him. He purred on. She sobbed harder, thinking about poor Shiloh, what would happen to him if the knackerman came and took her. Who would feed him his special tuna-and-anchovy treats? Whose chest would he curl up on each night?

One by one, as word spread, people from town came to look. They walked slowly by on the road, eyes on the mark, pulling coats around them tighter, faces serious, full of fear. No one came to the door. No one waved when they saw Mini in the window, peeking out between her bedroom curtains, not even Bea, who walked by on her way to school with her father and brother. Mini always braided Bea’s hair at school, but with Mini gone, she’d have to ask some other girl. Bea held her father’s hand and looked away when she saw Mini, like just meeting her eyes would mark her in some way too.

Mini walked away from the window, opened the drawer of her nightstand, took out the old wooden top wound with string. The top was one of her greatest treasures: it had been Papa’s when he was a boy, made right here at the Stoddard Factory, a gift from his own daddy, who worked the lathe there. Mini sat down on the floor and pulled the string, watched the top spin. Normally this calmed her. When she’d had a bad day at school, she’d run up to her room and make the top spin over and over, watching it do a dance across her old floorboards until she felt calm again. But today it just made her feel worse. The old red top wobbled drunkenly, spinning like a hurricane on its dull metal tip. It made too much noise, hit the leg of the bed, and fell over. She was sure they could hear it downstairs, that at any second Mama would come hurrying up, bang on the door, and say, “Are you playing with toys? Now? After what you’ve done?”

Mini put the top away.

The factory bell rang again at noon, marking the time just like any other normal day. But nothing was normal about this day. Mini floated back downstairs and took up her post by the front window, Shiloh at her feet. Papa was still by the fire. Mama sat alone on the couch, smoking one of Papa’s cigarettes even though she had given up smoking years ago. Finn hadn’t left his room.

Mama didn’t make lunch or even start supper. The refrigerator stayed closed, quietly humming.

Mini’s stomach grumbled, but she said nothing.

More families shuffled by in the late afternoon, casting wary glances at the door. People Mini had known all her life—her teacher, Miss Clement; Pops, who ran the general store; even old drunk Sad Willy staggered by, stopping long enough to urinate on the lilac bushes that lined the yard.

“How long do we wait?” Mini finally asked.

“Not long,” Mama said, her voice barely there, as if her windpipe were being crushed. “He’ll come for us soon.”

FIFTEENFRANKIE

March 11 & 12, 1919

After leaving the Stoddards’, Uncle Thomas and I stayed up late into the night discussing all that had happened; going over each detail again and again, trying to make sense of things. We sipped brandy and smoked our pipes in his study. I’d brought in the lantern from my room to provide extra light. Uncle Thomas’s familiar study felt too dark, too full of shadows. The wind rattled the windows and I was sure I heard fingertips tapping, seeking a way in. Each creak of the house became the footsteps of a dead man coming to find us. Despite feeling myself incredibly foolish, when I went to get the extra lantern, I dug through my room until I found the old charm Charlotte Albone had given me when I was a child to keep nightmares away: a silver eye that she said would protect me from all forms of evil. Knowing better than to show it to my uncle, I put it around my neck and kept it carefully hidden beneath my undershirt and white collared shirt.