Jackal, page 16
“Liz. Stop.”
“The missing girls, the ones found, have their chests ripped the same way your dad hunts—when he field dressed the deer with Garrett? He cut out the heart.”
Mel snaps. “Just because your family is messed up doesn’t mean that mine is!”
“Whoa! What the—” I bite my tongue. Of course she’s defensive. “I’m just telling you what I found. I want to keep you safe.”
“Grow up, Liz!” Mel is done. “The detectives are right.” She grips the earth and climbs back the way we came. “She couldn’t travel this far on her own.”
“Aren’t you listening to what I’m—”
“I’m telling you what the last few days here have been like. At first, I think, I wanted this to be something big and crazy, but it’s not. She got lost.”
“Mel—”
“The crayons are back, Liz.”
“What?”
“They’re back. I misplaced them. That’s all. There isn’t something bigger going on. Caroline is lost.”
I challenge her. “They’re just…back?”
She reaches into her pocket and shows me a blue one. It has a hole through it, like a puncture wound.
“How?”
“Must have misplaced them. Brought it as a reminder to keep my head on straight.” She keeps turning back.
I reach in my pocket for the map. “This is where two of the girls were found.”
She ignores me.
“Mel, look!” I push my phone in her face.
Mel grabs my phone. She walks away from me, with the map, pulling us off course.
I stop her. “Did you have a hunting dog growing up?”
Happy to be off the topic of missing girls, Mel latches on to the story of the dog. “Ace? Yeah. He was a good boy.”
“Not according to Nick.”
“Nick is an idiot. Don’t listen to him. Ace was the best.” Mel is ready to go to bat for a dog I’ve never heard her bring up before now. “Ace was loyal and sweet. My dad was—well, he still can be…” She chooses her next words carefully. “Dad has a strange…” Melissa gets stuck on more words. “He wants the world to make sense, his way, in his time. Even if he’s wrong, especially if he’s wrong. He’ll try to bend the universe to his will.”
“By shooting the dog?” I ask.
“Dad might have killed the dog, but he’d never do it like that. He let the dog out, fired a shot to scare him off, and then never let the dog back in.”
I look at Melissa with pity in my eyes. I can smell the denial coming off her. If her father was a monster, she’d never see it.
“Mel—” I start, but she doesn’t let me finish.
“I saw Ace at the back door three months later. Skin and bones. Living off the land. I wanted to give him some meat or something, but my mom told me not to. She said that if Dad saw him, he’d kill him. I gave him a pat on the head, told him he was a good boy, and shouted at him until he ran back into the woods. I never saw him again.” After a moment, she pulls the crayon back out. It looks like a dog got it. Chewed it up.
“There were a lot of people in the house,” Mel dismisses.
“Keisha Woodson disappeared like this too.”
That gets Mel back to me. She gets right in my face. “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it! Do not compare my child to a drunk girl in the woods. Caroline is not like her! Do not lump my girl in with a bunch of runaways and drug addicts.” It’s almost like Mel has heard the same things the mothers have about their girls. “Caroline is good!”
“Just like I’m ‘good’?” My anger makes me flush. With everything I’m learning, it’s a miracle my mother and I have lived here unbothered for so long. Maybe it’s ’cause we’re…good. We don’t make waves. If you didn’t know it, you’d barely even realize that we were here. Nestled in an upper-middle-class cul-de-sac, connected to friends via phone and messengers. Even when I lived here. We’ve always been hidden. Good. I don’t like the way that lives in me.
Mel shakes her head. “I didn’t—I’m not—I’m heading back.”
I don’t let her go. “So, me and Caroline are the ‘good’ ones. What about all the ‘bad’ ones, Mel?” She doesn’t stop. I grab her arm. She wrestles out of my grip.
“You have always thought this place was so backwards—Hicksville—full of rednecks!”
“It is.”
“I am here! My family is here! Are you accusing me of being ‘one of the good ones’ too?”
“I…I…” I don’t know how to counter that twist on my words.
“Ever since you moved away, you think you’re too good for this place. That anyone who stays here is stupid—dumb!”
“I never said that.”
“You don’t need to. Not all of us want to live packed on top of one another, paying thousands of dollars to sleep in a closet, doing jobs we hate, with people we hate, where our neighbors don’t care if we live or die—I want my kid to play outside without…” That thought stops her rant. Caroline did play outside. She was supposed to be safe. “I don’t want to have to drink to live. I saw how much you drank—you always drink. Did you get drunk at the wedding— Of course you did. How is that a question? Is that why you weren’t watching her? That why you lost my child? That is why you can’t let this go. ’Cause you know and I know this is all your fault!”
I wait for Mel to take it back. To admit she’s angry and lashing out. She doesn’t. I don’t ask her to.
“I’m so sorry, Mel,” I say. “I want to help. I’m trying to fix this.”
“Help by looking.” We both realize she’s still holding my phone at the same time. “Are you gonna get this map out again and chase stupid theories?”
“Give me my phone.”
“Gonna use this map to accuse my dad of being a murderer again?”
“Give me the phone and we can go back,” I concede. She doesn’t budge. I try to grab it from her. Before I can, she hurls it into the trees.
I note where I think I heard it thud. I get on my knees and search.
“Liz?”
I keep looking. I need that map.
“Wow.” Mel wipes her face. “When you get lost in here again, I don’t know if anyone is going to be able to find you this time.”
I stop.
I’ve needed a map, and she hasn’t. Even now she’s turning back with confidence. I always thought Mel stumbled upon me that night. I never thought she might have found me on purpose.
“Are you threatening me?”
“Forget this. This is crazy.” She extends her hand to me. “Come on. Let’s double back. Maybe the dogs have something.”
I turn away from Mel and dig through the underbrush for the phone. My vision blurs with tears. I don’t need to look at Mel to feel her shock. I was the kindly friend who always followed, who needed so little convincing, who was always happy to help. This is so much bigger than our friendship now. It’s not just her daughter out here. There are so many others and they all are depending on me.
I hear her footsteps retreat. I dig faster. Her footsteps echo in the trees around me as she leaves. I keep digging. Mud curls under my fingernails. I push layers of underbrush aside and crawl, searching. Out here, this map is all I have.
Purple.
I’ve never been more grateful for a bright phone case. I grab my phone and swipe. It still works. Opening the map, I see the pathways. A few quick threads will lead me right to the edge of the Parker plot.
“Mel?” I call. No one answers. “Mel!” I yell. I get to my feet. I see the shelf of earth we navigated down. The field from Bonfire Night is somewhere ahead. I start to call again when I remember what Kylie said. Don’t call back to anything that calls your name. Nothing has answered me, so far. All I have are my thoughts. I always thought Mel had befriended me out of the kindness of her heart. Now it looks like Mel’s friendship might have saved me in more ways than I ever knew.
TWELVE
Why not me?
All my time in this town, that question followed me. Admittedly, sometimes I asked it for purely selfish teenage reasons. Like not getting asked to prom or a kid admitting she only invited me to her birthday party so nobody would think she was racist. She didn’t want me there. We weren’t friends.
Why not me?
I was a Black girl in this town. I believed what happened to Keisha was an accident. As I search for the site of Bonfire Night, I walk myself through my memory of it again.
Mel convinced me to go. We joined the circle some other kids were in. Keisha was in that circle. She was running it. Keeping everyone laughing. After a while it was clear that, like at that little girl’s birthday party, I was being tolerated, not welcomed. I knew this had less to do with me being a Black girl and more to do with my place in the school’s social hierarchy. I didn’t have one. I moved around from one group to the next. Never popular. Never nerdy. People’s ability to categorize me and define me was so important. I want to say it’s just high school, but it seems like it’s a factor everywhere.
I walked off and sat in the dark. I looked up at the stars. I named them and recounted their stories for myself. They were my way out. What were my stones to build a path? Education and time. I had to get through high school, then I could go to college and get out.
Keisha checked in on me first. She told me not to trust Mel. Then Chris sat next to me.
“What are you looking at?” he asked. Yes, it was nice to be noticed by a white boy. Admitting that to myself now, I hope it will dismantle whatever this town left in me. It doesn’t. If healing is what I need, it will take time. If only it was as simple as relieving pain. Pain can be eased or numbed.
“The Summer Triangle,” I said. “Chasing the Great Bear.” I described the corresponding constellations. Chris listened until we both heard the shouts.
“Cops! Cops! Cops!”
Those words started a blur of events: We ran. I raced away with Chris on an ATV. He hid me in a tree. I waited in the dark. I saw Keisha’s face. One look and I knew she was in far more trouble than being pursued by the police. I reached out to her. She reached out to me.
Darkness. Teeth.
Pain in my arm.
I do my best to stay in the memory. Don’t let it slip by me again. Keisha reached out for me and was ripped away before she even touched me. Something else got ahold of me.
Keisha disappeared and a piercing dark tooth sank into me. It wouldn’t let go. I was too afraid to scream. I pulled, digging it in deeper. I looked out into the darkness that held me. The longer I stared at it, the more something started to take shape.
Something shifts and the memory finally opens:
Upright ears. Large jaw. Claws.
A hound with a maw the size of me.
Its canine tooth hooked into my arm. To free myself, I had to lean toward it to untether my flesh. The beast stank, like brackish water and death. I freed my arm.
The memory folds back over into darkness and silence.
It makes no sense. A hound. Not a face, a voice, a smell, or a clue to who this man is was buried inside my memory? An animal. My lizard brain insists on protecting me still. Like Kylie and Farrah, instead of letting me face my trauma, in my mind, the hound remains.
I look at the map again, rolling my palm up. My scar tightens. I catch the time on my phone before I close it. 7:47 p.m. What? That has to be wrong. I look at the sky. It’s a subtle shift, but there’s no doubt about it, night is coming. I’ve been out here for hours. Alone. Mel and I didn’t bring a pack because we thought we would have ample time to come back. I didn’t grab water. Not even coffee. I should be close to passing out, but I feel fine. Not hungry. Not dizzy or tired. That’s good. But, even if I turn back now, I’m not getting back to the site until well after dark. I’m close to something, I know it. The path ahead of me curves in a way that it doesn’t on the map. No time to hesitate. I take it.
“Caroline!” I hear my voice echo in the woods. If you hear something call your name, no, you didn’t. Clearly a legend based on an echo. Hearing it, now I understand. It is terrifying. I come up on another set of paths. This time I can’t tell if they’re on the map.
“Caroline!” I walk along the path and find myself in a place I’ve been before. I must be walking in circles, because before I know it, I’m standing at the same crossroads again. I’m in a divide that doesn’t seem to be anywhere on the map. This is why they are called The Rounds. I’m lost.
I breathe.
In and out.
In and out.
“Caroline!” I call. I try again. Taking a different path, a different direction. After a few minutes of walking, I find myself in the exact same place.
“Caroline!”
I don’t know how many paths I try. Pinks and oranges signal the coming sunset. I start to jog. As the sun sinks below the horizon, I run.
Trees and foliage fly past me. If I’m gonna have to try every path, I’m going to need to burn through them quickly. I scan the trees for something, a trail marker, a break in this endless cycle of forest.
Nothing.
I stop to catch my breath. I gasp it into my lungs. I feel sweat trickle down the back of my neck.
Why not me?
I shake the question away. Now is not the time for this. Now. June 21, 2017. The first day of summer. The day Black parents keep their children inside. A day I never knew about because I was never connected to the community. Latoya’s remark comes back to me: We’ll have to see if another girl goes missing today! My mouth goes dry. There is a Black girl lost in the woods today on the solstice.
Me.
Do not panic. Breathe.
In and out.
In and out.
I take a long inhale. In. Then exhale. Out.
Out. A second definitive exhale lets me know that I am not alone.
With all the hope I have, I cry out. “Caroline?” My breathing rumbles in the air, the loudest sound in the quiet of the woods.
In.
And out.
Out. The exhale lingers and lengthens and grows into a tone, almost like a whistle. It stops just as quickly as it starts. I look around me. I don’t see anything in between the trees.
“Caroline!” I try again.
This time, the whistle answers loudly and immediately. It’s so high-pitched that it could be a scream. I keep looking around me and I can’t tell where it’s coming from. It seems to be emanating from the trees themselves.
I run.
Feeling the darkness coming, I try to navigate toward the light. In the back of my head I know I’m running west, toward the setting sun, but at least it’s a direction I know.
The forest breaks. I take the gap in the trees. When I stop to check the map, the screen of my phone illuminates something in the corner of the small clearing. A shelter. Or something like it. It looks rushed. Made of a blue tarp and rope.
I approach and step in thick mud. It sucks at my shoe. I wrench it loose and lift the edge of the tarp.
The smell hits me first.
Blood.
Then the sight.
The inside of the tarp looks like a wound. Something was slaughtered here. Recently. Whatever did this is still close by. I should get out of here, but I need to know what I’ve found. A deep red mass. At the edges there’s a thin gray layer. It twists around, outlining the heap on the ground. My eyes try to figure it out from the center, then the sides. Moving my gaze around to the nearest point, I see something I recognize. Worms. Massive worms. I lean closer and the smell of shit shoots up my nose, correcting my error: an ashen pile of blood-splattered intestines lies in front of me. Beyond that, a deep red cone draws my eye. Still shiny and swollen with blood, I recognize that it’s a liver. I can’t name the other organs. Some are dark, they almost look black, others still encased in mucus. Steam rises off the large sections. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stomach this sight for much longer. Focus. I calculate the size of these organs. They’re small enough to be human. A child? To figure out this sick puzzle, I rest my hand over my gut and imagine what lies under my skin. I compare them. The inside of this once-living being is sour and meaty all at once. My stomach flips. I leave the tarp.
Outside, I breathe in fresh air.
In and out.
In and out.
A low hum of a growl stops me. I turn and see a huge black dog on the path. Oh God. I press on my scar to make sure this is real. No. It can’t be real. My arm aches. The dog remains. It looks much more solid than a shadow. I try to blink the image in front of me away. The black dog runs toward me. It’s smaller. Not the beast from my dreams.
“Max!” That’s Jessie. I look again. Max sits right in front of me. Flashlights bounce over me as the search party rushes in.
BRITTANY
June 2012
Brittany Miller was a star. That was clear from her very first dance recital. Other children tottered around the stage and had to be wrangled by the instructors when the music played. Some shrank with stage fright. Most sat and watched the audience as much as the audience watched them. Brittany came alive under the lights.
More than understanding and regurgitating steps, she embodied them. There was adult comprehension in her child’s body. Farrah saw this and knew. She was going to get her daughter to greatness.
Farrah had been born and raised in Johnstown. She had a small life. I don’t mean this in pejorative terms. Farrah thrived in the box of her existence and never dreamed of anything bigger. It felt too uncomfortable. She saw how Brittany was the opposite. She would be stifled by a small life. Her shine was made to be seen by millions.
