Earl swallowed the node of meat.
“This is not… what I was meant for. This… persisting,” it said. There was something vicious in its voice. A knot of something resented for so long it had gone fetid. “There are things Iknow, like I know… my death was stolen. But it’s a page of notes for a century of life. There’s not enough detail. Time passes, and I write over myself, score out memories and jot in new ones. Then I find what… what I need is gone. Erased. Scribbled out.”
It stopped and stared at Ledger. Despite the deep, claggy anger in its voice, the face hadn’t changed expression. It was left in doll-like neutral, and Ledger wondered if that was a measure of how genuine Earl was. Was the emotion truer if it remembered to pull dead muscle and stiff flesh into the expected shapes, or when it forgot about it?
“That sounds…”
Earl wasn’t graceful. It was clumsy, but it was fast. It lurched across the room, one baby pink toenail ripped out in the flooring, and grabbed Ledger’s throat in one hand. Short, soft fingers squeezed down, and Ledger gagged. The smell he’d gotten used to ignoring was suddenly hot and ripe in his throat, the thick, hot smell of fresh blood.
“Pity… disgusts… me,” Earl forced out. “You disgust… me. That I need a catspaw… to do my work. Turns my… stomach.”
Ledger grabbed at the body’s fingers to try and peel them off his throat. It didn’t work. He gave up and choked the words out through his constricted throat.
“I’m saving it for myself,” he rasped out. Earl’s fingers tightened, and black smeared around the edges of Ledger’s vision. He grabbed its wrist, and his fingers slid into the raw, open hole. The meat inside squelched. “I have time… until the equinox.”
Earl narrowed its eyes. Then it made a wet and meaty noise in the back of its throat and let him go. Ledger staggered backward, his breath raw as it scraped down his throat.
“Go,” Earl said. “Before I… change my mind.”
The body went limp, head lolled down to its chest, and then pitched forward and face-planted onto the floor, blond hair in a messy halo around its head. Ledger stepped back. He tightened his grip around the folder and stared down at the dead girl.
There would be a family somewhere. A best friend. An enemy. A dog. Like the families and loved ones and dogs of Bell’s victims.
And Ledger was going to leave them to it.
The guilt stung. Not enough to make him do anything about it, but enough to prompt him to try and assuage it. Ledger tucked the folder under his arm, crouching down to gingerly roll the girl onto her back. Her mouth fell open as he moved her and exposed the jellied mess of her soft palate. When Ledger shifted the body, the smell of salt-roasted cod and roses caught in his throat.
He ignored it as he dragged the body to the chair and propped it back up. Maybe it wasn’t enough—just a little bit of dignity—but it was all Ledger could give her. Her head fell back, and he straightened it up. There wasn’t much point. When he let go, her head would fall back again, or forward.
For now, though, he was face-to-face with the dead girl.
And something screamed at him out of her eyes.
Ledger scrambled backward. There were a lot of terrible things he could take in his stride. This—unexpectedly—was not one of them.
The dead girl stared at him. Ledger couldn’t have explained what it was that betrayed someone was still in there. It was nothing physical. There was just a consciousness in those murky water eyes that shouldn’t be stuck in a dead thing.
Something cold and logical scratched around the edges of that thought. Ledger tried to catch it but couldn’t pin it down. If it was important, it would come to him. He looked at the dead girl and swallowed, his mouth sticky and warm.
“I can’t help,” he said. “I don’t even know how. I’m sorry.”
CHAPTER14
IT WAS TOOearly for a beer. Ledger had one, anyhow.
He sat on the tailgate of Wren’s truck, downed the lukewarm Pabst, and stared out at the lake. It looked blue and peaceful, still, except for the reflections of the clouds that scudded over the sky.
“We used to come here every summer,” Ledger said. He took a swig of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It felt almost normal.”
“I’m not the one to weigh in on that.” Wren climbed up on the wheel and leaned over to grab a beer out of the truck. It made a sharp hiss as he popped the tab. “But I guess growing up with a cultist serial killer, neither are you.”
It was hard to argue with that.
“People always say things like ‘he was such aniceman’ or ‘no one ever expected a thing,’” Ledger said. “Not Bell. No one knew he murdered people, but no one was surprised to find out he did. He was… off. But every summer, we’d pack up and come down here, swim, fish, and run around in the woods.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Yeah,” Ledger said. He drained his beer, crushed the can, and tossed it behind him into the bed of the truck. It all felt so normal, the sort of conversation people who’d not seen behind the set-dressing had. There was probably something dangerous about indulging in it. “It kind of took the shine off it when I realized this is where he brought his victims the rest of the year. Pretty sure the ones that were never found are at the bottom of that lake.”
