‘Hi,’ she said. She intended her voice to be bright, but when it reached her ears she sounded like she was teetering on the edge of hysteria. ‘Do you know a boy and a girl about my age who live around here? I think they’re twins.’
The two kids stared at her, unblinking, not speaking.
‘Do you know where—’
She stopped. The toys the children were playing with had caught her eye. They were dolls, the old-fashioned type, with realistic hair and staring glass eyes. They were coated in several layers of dirt, as if they’d just been retrieved from a dumpster. The dolls had been stripped naked, revealing their smooth, featureless bodies, and beside them was a hole in the lawn, dug with a pair of plastic spades. Both the children had soil-encrusted fingernails.
She started again. ‘Do you know them?’
The children stared at her, mute, and she felt Ryan arrive by her side.
The boy pointed to a house across the street.
‘Is that where they live?’ Frankie asked.
The boy nodded.
‘What are their names?’
‘Buddy,’ whispered the boy.
‘Darlene,’ said the girl. ‘You shouldn’t play with them.’
Frankie and Ryan exchanged a look. ‘Why not?’
‘They’re mean.’
‘They killed Milo,’ said the boy.
It was as if the temperature in the street had dropped several degrees. Ryan was staring at the kids. ‘Who’s Milo?’ he asked.
‘He was our cat,’ said the boy.
‘And Buddy and Darlene killed him?’ Frankie wanted to puke.
‘They buried him. They told us they buried him while he was still alive. They sat on his grave until he stopped mewing.’
Frankie tried to speak but there was no saliva in her mouth.
Ryan looked as sick as she felt. ‘Did you tell your parents?’
The girl shook her head. ‘They said if we told any grown-ups they would bury us next.’
‘Alive,’ said the boy.
‘They killed next door’s rabbit too.’
Frankie felt all the remaining blood drain from her face.
‘Took him from his hutch and carried him into the woods,’ the girl said. ‘We saw them.’
The children looked like they were going to cry.
Ryan tugged at Frankie’s arm. ‘We should go. I knew this was a bad idea. Buddy and Darlene are clearly complete psychopaths.’
‘Wait,’ said Frankie. ‘Was the rabbit white?’
‘Uh-huh,’ said the girl. ‘White and super cute.’
‘And did they say what they were going to do with the rabbit?’
‘No. But Buddy said if we told . . .’
‘They’d take us to him.’
Frankie and Ryan exchanged a look. ‘Who?’
The boy’s voice dropped to a whisper, and his eyes flicked nervously in the direction of the woods. ‘The man who lives in the woods.’
‘In a secret cabin.’
‘He’s lived there a long time.’
‘He killed people.’
‘And if he catches you, he’ll choke you or smash your head in with a rock.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Ryan. ‘They’re talking about Everett Miller.’ He crouched on the ground beside the kids. ‘He went away a long time ago. You don’t need to worry about him.’
‘No,’ said the boy, with the fervour of a true believer. ‘He’s hiding.’
‘He’s still here,’ said the girl.
‘And if you’re not good, if you tell tales,’ the boy said before the girl joined him: ‘He’ll get you.’
Chapter 16
I’m fading.
The words are like a spear through his chest.
I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.
‘Abigail. Please don’t say that. You have to stay. It’s all—’
Fading, she says again, not letting him finish.
And it feels exactly how it did when he first realised he was going to lose her.
1998. Summer turned to fall and fall gave way to winter. The cold weather forced them inside, to the house that Abigail shared with her husband, though he was hardly ever around – always on the road, Abigail said. Some kind of travelling salesman. It was strange seeing her in a house. Those first meetings and outings and picnics had always taken place in the woods or down by the lake. That was where she seemed at home, among the trees and rocks, with the animals and the wildflowers. From the day of that first picnic by the lake, when he had met Goat and Fox, he had become part of their group, their gang. He knew if he’d told his mom he and a couple of other kids from school were hanging out with a woman her age, she would have freaked. She would have wondered what this grown-ass woman wanted with a trio of high-school kids. Was she giving them drugs? Was she some kind of pervert?