The Dead Girls Club - Damien Angelica Walters Page 0,55
my throat. Is the woman’s mouth open a bit, revealing not teeth and tongue but darkness? Or is it simply a smudge in the pencil?
“Is she going to eat those girls?”
“I don’t think so. See that girl?” I point. “That’s me.”
“But you don’t have long hair.”
“I did when I was a little girl.”
“How come you don’t have it now?”
I shake away an image of scissors, of long strands stark against the white curve of a sink.
“It takes too much time to take care of, and I’d rather spend that time taking care of other people, like you.”
She smiles, but it’s fleeting. “I still think she’s going to eat them. Monsters can do that without taking you away. They eat you in here.” She touches her chest.
I mimic her gesture to quell the ache in my heart. She’s right. Sometimes they do.
“Who drew the picture?” she says.
“A friend drew it a long time ago. The other girl in the picture.”
“Did the monster eat her?”
My stomach clenches. “No,” I say. “Why don’t you sit back down so you can finish telling me your story?”
“Will I be okay, Dr. Cole?”
An unexpected—and odd—question, but I nod. “Of course you will.”
Is there any crueler lie we tell kids? Regardless of what happens, of how deep the scars might run, we say they’ll be okay and they believe it. They trust us. But what else are we supposed to say? Hey, kid, childhood is a bitch and she leaves marks?
I fold the picture and shove it in my desk. Cassidy starts talking again, peeking through her lashes. Innocent and trusting. I may have done a monstrous thing, but I’m not a monster. I’m not.
I believed that once. I wish I could believe it now.
CHAPTER TEN
THEN
The used bookstore in Timonium had a big horror section, way bigger than the mall. They had two copies of Stephen King’s The Dark Half, which I hadn’t read yet, and I grabbed the one in better shape. I picked out five more books, and since my dad wasn’t finished looking, I went to Becca’s favorite section, mythology, and found one she didn’t have, thick and heavy with pictures and descriptions. Another looked good, too, about ghosts and folklore. Halfway in, there was a picture of a woman in a long red robe. A ghost in Alabama, not a witch. Maybe not Becca’s Red Lady, but she reminded me of her. I tucked it under my arm. My dad wouldn’t mind; I had some of my allowance with me.
I’d called Becca to see if she wanted to come with us, but her mom had said, all slurry and garbled like I woke her up even though it was after breakfast, that Becca wasn’t home.
On the way home, we played license plates, where you had to make up words beginning with the letters on the plate of the car in front. Dad made me laugh with Stinky Cat Butt and Dog Poo Brain, and I made him groan with Fart Cheese Balls and Monkey Gut Bomb, but on my next turn the letters were TRL. All I could think of was The Red Lady, so I said I was stuck, but it was okay. We were close to home.
He dropped me off at Becca’s so I could give her the books, but no one answered. I didn’t just want to leave the books, but since her mom had said earlier she wasn’t home, I had an idea where she might be.
Even thinking about going inside the empty house made my palms slippery and my skin hot, but I didn’t need to be scared. The Red Lady wasn’t in the house that night. It was only my imagination. Because of the stories Becca told, because of the candles making me sick.
The door was locked and I thought knocking would scare Becca, so I walked around the side, crouching beside an overgrown bush next to a basement window. With the branches pushed out of the way, I tried to peek in, but the curtains were shut tight. Staying low, I crept to the next window, also mostly hidden by another bush. But there was a tiny gap in these curtains, a hint of light. I knuckled the glass.
“Becca, it’s me,” I said.
The curtain twitched. I rocked back on my heels and fell on my butt. “Geez,” I said. “It’s Heather.”
The light went out. I knocked on the glass twice more, but the light didn’t come back on. I sat for a while, expecting her to