The Dead Girls Club - Damien Angelica Walters Page 0,104

mound of crumpled tissue paper, is a book. A simple thing of construction paper folded in half and stapled unevenly along the edge. On the front cover in red magic marker: THE WITCH BY REBECCA LILIAN THOMAS AND HEATHER MARIA COLE.

The edges are ragged; a corner of the back cover is missing. The interior pages are in better shape but wear the passage of time with rips, creases, water stains. I don’t remember this particular book or story, but it’s unmistakably ours. We must’ve been only seven or eight when we made it. Her drawings, my writing, but she was the storyteller; I was the scribe.

The writing is legible, barely.

Once upon a time there was a witch. Her real name was Sarah. Everyone was mean to her. They ignored her. One day she got sick and died. No one came to her funeral. Then everyone got sick and started to die, too. When there was only one person left, someone came into the room. It was the witch! She was alive the whole time! She killed everyone because she was so mad!

I half laugh, half sigh. The drawing on the last page shows a witch in a typical pointed hat, standing in a graveyard, her long hair coiled on the ground beside her. The precursor to Becca’s later stories, the drawing in my desk, and all the others I recall. The genesis of the Red Lady, here in old ink. A story. Just that and nothing more.

I gather up the torn brown paper, and there’s a blank space where a postmark should be. I turn the rest of the paper over and over. No postmark at all.

I practically run down the hallway and skid to a stop in reception. “Ellie, the package on my desk, was it delivered?”

“A woman dropped it off for you a little while ago. She said she was a friend.”

“Did she leave her name?” I say, my entire body rigid.

Ellie bites her lip. “No, sorry, I should’ve asked, but then the phone rang and I—”

“What did she look like?”

“Is—”

I thump a fist on the edge of her desk. “What did she look like!”

She blinks fast. “She was sort of short and thin and had blonde hair to about here.” She taps the middle of her upper arm. “She was wearing—”

“When did she drop it off?”

“Um, about ten minutes or so, I think.” She glances at the wall clock. “Yes, ten minutes, because I looked at the clock right before she came in.”

The air feels as thick as an August day.

“Dr. Cole, is something wrong? Should I—”

But I’m halfway out the door. I jab the elevator button, hiss air through my teeth, and decide on the stairs, my heels clattering all the way. Short with blonde hair? It sounds like—

This isn’t possible. It isn’t.

Under a sky the color of an old wool blanket, I scan the sea of cars in the lot. A man in a gray suit; a red-haired woman in a floral dress; an older couple walking together, a dark-blue folder under the man’s arm. My feet kick pebbles as I hit the nearest row, peeking in cars. I see pale hair in a driver’s seat and stumble to a halt by a green Honda. The door opens. A woman emerges, all highlighted waves and red lipstick.

Ignoring her frown, I start moving again, blood rushing in my ears. A car pulls out of the lot, spewing a wide fan of gravel, and I squint, trying to discern the driver’s shape, but the sedan moves too quickly into the flow of traffic. I walk the bumper lines, glancing from left to right.

Then I feel someone watching. Not a passing glance but a stare, a magnet drawing my gaze across the four lanes of traffic on Route 100. And there, standing near a café, a petite woman with pale hair. In spite of the weather, she’s wearing a pair of dark sunglasses.

I break into a run, adrenaline thrumming in my veins. The blonde doesn’t move. I reach the end of the lot. Now only a bit of grass, a sidewalk, and four lanes of moving traffic separate us. I step off the curb, but pull back as a car nears. This time of day, traffic chokes the air with exhaust and the rhythmic hum of tires on asphalt. The woman remains where she is. Becca remains where she is. Because it’s her.

But I killed her.

A childish giggle escapes my throat. My stomach churns with disbelief, shock, elation,