When Devils Sing(39)
“Yes, ma’am, I was,” Samantha Calhoun said in a thick Georgia drawl. She shifted uncomfortably in front of the camera. “He was really tore up about not getting accepted to the colleges he’d wanted. I often found that drinking was his only way of coping with things. That night was no different.”
“Would you say he drank more than average? More than your peers?” the news anchor asked pointedly.
“Yes, I would.” Samantha cleared her throat. “It was all he knew how to do. Grew up around it, you see.”
“What a shame,” Papa Charles said from the kitchen, and Isaiah turned the TV down. “Such a young life lost. Nothin’ but tragedy in those waters.”
Grandma Bee joined Isaiah, shaking her head at the screen. “I remember reading about him in the paper a while back. He raised money for the Langley County animal shelter, kept it from closing up.”
Isaiah struggled to keep his composure at the news. It was reported like the email had said. A chill went down Isaiah’s spine as he considered the gravity of it. What had Dawson gotten himself involved with for this to happen? All at once, Isaiah began to feel this was bigger than him—bigger than his podcast.
He leaned against the couch for support. “Is it normal for them not to search for a body?”
Grandma Bee nodded. “They haven’t in decades. Last time they did, the divers never resurfaced. It’s Old Carrion that lies beneath the water, baby. An entire town’s ruins on that lake floor. It’s too dangerous. That’s why we always drove down to Florida if we wanted to swim in the summer. I’d rather face a shark than whatever hides in Lake Clearwater.”
Isaiah’s eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean by that?”
“The lake’s haunted,” Bee said simply. “Anyone with sense knows it. Only townsfolk looking for trouble and clueless tourists would set foot in that water. Each year those cicadas return, the bodies seem to pile up. It’s as if those cicadas wake the spirits and disturb their peace.”
Isaiah nodded, though he’d never been one for superstitions, preferring fact over feelings. But through his podcast, he’d learned that folklore and legend were often rooted in a kernel of truth, one just had to dig deep enough to find it. “I’m gonna go check on Keisha.”
Isaiah disappeared upstairs before anyone could object. He found his cousin splayed across his bedroom floor, surrounded by notecards and neon highlighters, still engrossed in her textbook. “How’s the reading going?”
“Just fifty pages to go,” she mumbled absently.
Here she was, barely eleven and already studiously trying to assemble a future for herself from flashcards and outdated textbooks. Keisha had a chance of being accepted into the coveted Clearwater Academy in the coming years, and she was already fighting hard for her future, just like his father had done when he’d been accepted at fourteen.
“Take your time,” Isaiah whispered, carefully stepping over her on the way to his desk.
Isaiah pulled out his laptop, mentally preparing himself for an evening of relentless research. He began with Dawson’s email, wondering if the IP address could provide anything of note.
He inspected the email’s metadata, copying the address into the tracking software he often used for his podcast. It took him several minutes to filter through the numeric noise before he learned the email was sent from a public Wi-Fi network.
Specifically, from a business in Carrion.
The Colonial Inn.
Dawson had been connected to the Colonial’s internet when he emailed Isaiah a week ago. His heart stuttered a little as he considered what this meant: Neera had lied about seeing Dawson, and he was determined to find out why.
Isaiah looked again at the text he’d begun to type earlier in the day. Pushing back his complicated feelings, he sent it.
Waffle House off Antioch Rd in the morning?
To Isaiah’s surprise, Neera replied a moment later: Sure, does 7 work for you?
See you then, he responded, and his chest felt heavy again.
Isaiah looked out the bedroom window, dark eyes lingering on the farm’s oldest oak tree, the branches thick and sprawling, heavy with Spanish moss. For a moment, he allowed himself to remember the contours of their friendship: the worlds they’d created when they were younger, when they’d climb into that very tree and weave elaborate stories between each other—little gods above the flatland. The way that, when things were good, Isaiah had felt as if no one would ever truly see him as Neera did.
But they weren’t children anymore.
“Isaiah?” Keisha asked. “You okay?”
Isaiah blinked the memory away, finding his cousin staring up at him with a furrowed brow. “I’m all good.” He fixed his face with that easy smile.
Once Keisha was absorbed again in her schoolwork, Isaiah pulled up Dawson’s Instagram, looking once more for anything that stood out. Despite his profile being public, he was a private person. The only thing Isaiah could gather from the paltry photos was that he had an affection for rescued animals and a passion for golf. It didn’t tell him anything about who Dawson really was or who his friends were.
Isaiah went to Andrea Sumter’s Facebook next. She was less social media savvy, with her account entirely public, including an archive of hundreds of photos spanning years. Over the next hour, Isaiah went through every single photo album. Every cheesy caption. Studying all the comments.