and feet on the ladder. He climbed a few steps. The baby was screaming.
Ambrose was at home with his girlfriend.
They heard a baby crying.
Someone left a baby carriage on the porch.
There was no baby.
The sheriff stopped. All of his training screamed at him to keep climbing that ladder to help that baby. But his instincts told him to stop. He felt like a dog reacting to an invisible whistle. That’s what the baby cries were. They were a dog whistle. A dinner bell. An ambush.
He knew this was wrong.
There was something evil here.
If his deputies had done what the sheriff started to do next, he would have suspended them. But the sheriff was no fool. He started to climb back down the ladder. Away from this tree. Away from these woods. Away from whatever that dog whistle was. And that’s when he heard the voice.
“Daddy.”
The instant he heard the sound, his blood froze.
It was the girl with the painted nails.
“Daddy.”
She sounded exactly like she did that day in the hospital. The day before she died. She touched his hand with her little fingers and smiled with those broken teeth and called him that word.
“Daddy.”
The sheriff climbed. He reached the top of the ladder. He looked through the little window. The tree house was empty. Just little footprints on the wood floor.
“Daddy, help.”
The sheriff heard her voice right behind the tree house door. He pulled out his gun with one hand and reached for the doorknob with the other.
“Daddy, please help me.”
The sheriff threw open the door.
He saw her hiding in the corner.
The girl with the painted nails.
Her teeth weren’t broken. Her little body wasn’t broken. She was an angel. With a key around her neck.
“Hi, Daddy. You never finished the story. Do you want to read to me?” she asked, smiling.
The sheriff smiled, his eyes welling with tears.
“Of course I do, honey,” he said.
“Then, come inside,” she said.
She started to walk toward him. She took her little hand and gently helped him into the tree house.
The door closed behind him.
The sheriff looked around the tree house. It was no longer empty. It looked like her old hospital room. The little girl with the painted nails climbed into the bed. She got under the covers and brought the blanket under her little chin.
“The book is on the nightstand,” she said.
When the sheriff saw the book, he got an uneasy feeling. He remembered that her mother never read to her. She was never allowed to go to school. So, the book of fairy tales that he read to her in the hospital was the only book she ever heard. It was the book he read to her the night she died. She fell asleep before he could finish the last story. She never got to hear the ending.
“I want to know how it ends,” she said. “Start reading from here.”
She pointed to a page. The sheriff cleared his throat and read.
“Grandma, what big eyes you have!”
“All the better to see you with, my dear.”
The girl with the painted nails closed her eyes. When the sheriff finished the story, he realized that she was asleep. She still didn’t get to hear the end of the story. The sheriff touched the hair on her head and smiled. He turned out the light. Then, he watched her rest until he fell asleep in the chair right next to her.
When the sheriff woke up, he had no memory of the tree house looking like her hospital room. No memory of reading that story. He didn’t know why he had fallen asleep in the tree house. The only vague recollection he had was the memory of the girl with the painted nails calling him “Daddy.”
When the sheriff left the tree house, he looked up. The clouds were gone. The day was night. And the moon was a sideways smile. The sheriff felt like he had fallen asleep in the tree house for an hour at most.
But when he looked at his watch, it read 2:17 a.m.
The sheriff walked down the 2x4 ladder, and his boots hit the snowy ground with a crunch like broken bones. He looked around the clearing and saw that the deer were long gone. It was just him and the moonlight. Alone with his thoughts.
Why didn’t I save her?
The sheriff walked back through the Mission Street Woods. He looked at the footpath and saw the years of neglect. Old rusted beer cans. Condoms. Bongs made out of plastic honey bears. Stuffed with the