Page 72 of Stay Buried

She thought she should tell her brother the truth. He deserved to know.

It’s happening again. I stopped my meds because I thought I was all better, and now I’m seeing things that aren’t there. Things that can’t be there.

But instead, she said, “I thought I heard knocking, but I was sound asleep and I couldn’t find the light and when I opened the door…”

He looked at her, eyes wide, waiting.

“I thought I saw…” she started, tears spilling from her eyes now. “But I must have been dreaming.”

“Dreaming? Then explain how this got here.”

Malcolm pointed at the front of the door.

There, in dripping dark-red paint, was the mark—the same mark she’d seen on the little girl’s house earlier today. The crude figure of a horse’s head, like a prehistoric cave painting.

Ash reached out, put a finger on the wet paint of the creature’s mane, took it away and put her thumb to it, rubbing the oily red around like a kindergartener with finger paints.

Relief washed through her. Hallucinations didn’t leave paint behind, at least not paint that your sane brother could see. Whatever horror they were facing, it was real, and they could face it together.

“What the hell is this?” Malcolm asked, turning, looking around the parking lot where his old Chevy pickup sat alone, out across the deserted street, into the woods beyond.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I think we know someone who does.”

THIRTYFRANKIE

March 14, 1919

You can’t just send me off!” Aunt Margaret declared. The three of us were in the kitchen eating breakfast, though it was closer to dinnertime. Aife was under the table, hoping for one of us to drop some scraps.

At Uncle Thomas’s insistence, I’d gone to my room and slept fitfully for a couple of hours, tossing and turning in my narrow bed. A little after ten a.m., I’d given up on sleep and hurried to the dining room to check on the patients. Uncle Thomas was in there alone.

“Where are they?” I’d asked, a wave of shock washing over me.

“Gone.” His face was as pale as a sheet of paper. He gripped the back of a maple chair, his hands trembling slightly.

“But… what happened?”

“They’re just gone, Frankie,” he’d snapped, turning away from me. “There’s nothing more we can do about it.”

He and I had tidied the dining room in silence, picked up the blankets, tucked the chairs back under the table. I didn’t dare ask more about what had transpired with the injured townspeople, whowere now God only knew where.

Afterward, Thomas had gone out for an hour, returning with the latest news on the sickness in town. And more than that, he had a plan.

“It’s all arranged,” Thomas told Aunt Margaret now as he stirred honey into his oatmeal. “You’ll go with David, Mercy, Chauncey, Harold, and Stewart.”

“Chauncey’s leaving?” I asked, realizing after I’d said it that I’d sounded a little too enthusiastic.

“He doesn’t want to, but he’ll do what his father thinks best.” Uncle Thomas frowned at me. “He wants to take Pearl with him.”

A lump formed in my throat, high and tight.

“But the roads,” Margaret said. “They’re impassable. And all the horses are gone.”

“You’ll use snowshoes and go on foot. David and the boys will use a toboggan to carry what few supplies and clothing you’ll bring. You’ll have guns. Provisions. If you leave first thing in the morning, you should make it over the mountain and to Amsterdale by nightfall if the weather holds.”

“No. I won’t leave you.” She looked from Uncle Thomas to me. “Either of you.”

He took her hands. “You must, Maggie. You can’t stay here. If you won’t do it for me, do it for our child.”