Bad Creek, page 17
“Since when are you nostalgic?” Iris said, playfully slapping his shoulder.
“I always liked the tire swing.”
“Yeah, but you just admitted it.”
“Seriously, though. What happened to it? Was it last summer?”
“I don’t know. It was already gone when we got here. Why don’t we just blame the Claveys?”
Aidan rolled his eyes. They took a break from planning Iris’s ritual suicide, and debated where to buy supplies for a new tire swing instead.
Gum tuned them out. He couldn’t let himself listen to them acting like friends again. It was a false victory. The calm before the storm. Something was coming, and Gum worried it would be all his fault.
Cross. Slash—
“What about Gum?” Aidan said.
Gum perked up. Had they even noticed that he hadn’t talked in an hour? Had he even said a word after putt-putt? Could he, if he wanted to?
“He wasn’t at Savi’s party that night,” Aidan clarified.
“I mean, I wasn’t either,” Iris pointed out.
Aidan nodded. “Yeah, but we need you . . .”
Need you to be Glory.
“Gum’s the only one who’s seen Helena. He should go too.” Iris glanced at Gum. She had that manic determination in her eyes. She looked just like her sister. “But just watch, okay? Don’t interact with me at all. Be a ghost, basically.”
* * *
“Take it.” The words fluttered into his ear like a mosquito. Quiet, in the scheme of things, but so wickedly close to his eardrum he jumped. Aidan and Iris couldn’t hear it. They were focused on the scary movie playing on Aidan’s laptop, while Gum stared at Iris’s broken Magic 8 Ball on her nightstand. The night had been admittedly bearable after they went inside Cabin 4. Their secret plans were not to be mentioned while Iris’s moms were around.
The movie Aidan showed them was the perfect distraction: some postapocalyptic western with zombie horses. Aidan would never admit it, but he could be just like Paul sometimes. Except Aidan would act all humble as he presented whatever obscure media he’d hyper-fixated on and be shocked when everyone liked it. Eventually he’d forget to play it cool and start rambling about the cinematography and point out shots that were actually a reference to a Renaissance painting or some shit. That was the best version of Aidan.
And that was how the night had gone, brain-eating farm animals and popcorn mixed with marshmallows until Glory realized she wasn’t the center of attention.
“Take it,” she whispered. Voice low and slippery and so close it could have come from within him. The lights were off. Everyone was so focused on the movie, Iris maybe wouldn’t even notice if Gum leaned over and grabbed her Magic 8 Ball. He could buy her a new one. But she had said she wanted to hold on to the original. How could he possibly do that to her?
“Take it.”
No fucking way, Gum thought, knowing Glory would hear him. His heart raced from the small disobedience. She couldn’t actually force him, could she? He still had free will.
“Take it,” she growled. But Gum didn’t move. He didn’t move for the whole movie, not even to grab popcorn. He sat on his hands to avoid the urge. He watched the last hour of the movie in the reflection of the Magic 8 Ball, and when it was over, and Iris said she was too tired for another one, Gum dragged his feet through the dewy grass between their cabins. He lay on the lumpy mattress in Cabin 3 and stared out the open window, where he could still see the Magic 8 Ball on Iris’s nightstand.
* * *
He didn’t sleep.
His ears were ringing from hours of take it take it take it. He probably had permanent hearing loss at this point. His heart ached, like Glory had reached her hands inside of him and was squeezing his internal organs for fun. Gum’s hands, propped under his pillow, had gone numb.
Not even his eyes had rest. He forgot how to blink. There were spots at the edges of his vision, making a vignette around the stupid fucking Magic 8 Ball.
Dawn came. Birds merrily chirped. Boat engines cranked to life. A whole night had gone by, and Gum was still stubbornly holding on to what little autonomy he had left. Popping every blood vessel in his eyes, giving himself a heart attack, for what? Pride? Since when could he afford any of that?
What was another humiliation?
Fine.
The second he relented, the invisible hands clutching his chest let go. He could blink. He could breathe. But he knew his body would rebel again if he didn’t act quickly.
Gum climbed out the window. He didn’t quite stick the landing, but Glory was silently laughing at him anyway, so who cared?
Iris had slept with her window open. Easy. Gum approached as silently as possible, keeping his eyes on the lump of blankets on the bed. He’d almost made it, fingers just about to lift the screen, when a corpse peeled away from Iris’s door.
Just like Glory, and just like Helena, she was waterlogged, covered in algae and fish guts. She shuffled toward Iris’s bed. Her head hung forward unnaturally, bobbing up and down with each crooked step. It was like her spinal cord had snapped in half, and the only thing keeping her head from toppling to the floor was her rotting skin. She wore a tattered blue dress that cut off a little past her gray knees. What was left of her hair hung in a braid, with soggy ribbons.
He wanted to scream, but Glory squeezed his throat.
“Take it.”
He stayed at the window, watching helplessly, as the decaying girl with the ribbons in her hair tore through the quilts, revealing a sleeping Iris. She grabbed Iris by the neck, lifting her out of the bed with impossible strength, and Iris’s eyes didn’t flutter for a second.
“Take it. Take it. Take it.”
And then what? You take Iris?
Glory and her ever-expanding army of drowned girls. Even in the afterlife, she had to lead a clique. When did this one die? he silently asked. If she really was Glory, she’d know just by the outfit. She once got really into historical costuming, probably just so she could ruin movies for people.
Glory’s inhuman voice echoed in his ear. “When it was her time.”
Ribbon Girl dragged Iris by the throat, inching toward the door. It swung open with an eerie creak. Even the cabin was an accomplice now. But what was Gum doing to do to stop it? Aidan had run to her, shaken her awake, at the dock. Gum’s feet were cement as his hands lifted the screen of their own accord, snatching up the Magic 8 Ball.
Iris and Ribbon Girl disappeared out the bedroom door. They were heading outside. Gum watched them slowly approach the dock. A few more moments, and Iris would go off the edge. The water was only five feet deep there, but it wasn’t impossible to drown in shallow water. Iris would go under and Gum would just be standing here, holding the fucking Magic 8 Ball.
“It’ll be her time soon.”
The screen door clacked open. “Iris!” called a female voice. Joanna, barefoot in her pajamas, ran to the dock. The second her hand touched her daughter’s, Ribbon Girl dissolved into muddy water.
Gum hurried back to Cabin 3, slipping through his window to watch the Garrens.
Iris still didn’t wake as Joanna coaxed her back inside. Joanna looked around nervously. As if she had also seen the rotting ghost. As if she too worried it would come back.
Chapter 24 Iris
“Can I borrow some nail polish?”
April looked up from her book—a crime thriller, as usual. The cover was splattered with red, blocky text. Iris didn’t understand how her mom could casually read something like that on their porch, on the anniversary of her daughter’s death.
Then again, Iris was going to a party tonight.
“Yeah . . . in my makeup bag. On the sink,” April said, before closing the book on her lap. “Why?”
“Lost mine,” Iris answered. She turned to go back inside, but her mom reached for her.
“Will you sit with me for a while?” she asked.
Joanna was out grabbing Fourth of July cookie ingredients for tomorrow. She claimed to not be patriotic, but she couldn’t help but bake for a theme. She had seemed to be in a good mood this morning, and Iris hoped it lasted during their trip into the city. Shopping in Mackinac could be a slog. April always held out on buying her yearly pullover until they went to the very last store and decided actually the first store had the best options. It was always too hot and Iris’s thighs chafed from walking and it was the day before the last full day in Bad Creek. She’d rather spend it with her boys in the Landings.
This year, however, she had a mission. Red top. Puffy sleeves. Flowy white skirt.
Whatever was responsible for Glory’s death, she would confront it at Savi’s party.
“I might have to skip making cookies tonight. We’re all going to Aidan’s when we get back from Mackinac,” Iris said. The party wouldn’t start until much later, but she had to get ready early. Glory used to prep for hours whenever she had to attend a social event. Iris couldn’t just show up; she had to show up like Glory.
“You would cruelly leave your mother all by her lonesome?” April asked, smiling weakly.
It was a joke, but only to cover the painful truth. This was the day. The grief counselor stressed memory triggers and anniversaries, like Glory’s birthday, the day she was supposed to graduate, the anniversary of her death. July third had come.
And Iris was going to a party.
Guilt squirmed around in her stomach as she ran inside and grabbed nail polish. Red. That was the color Glory would choose. One summer, Glory was convinced she was going to be a world-famous nail tech. She had painted designs on all their nails—vines and flowers and clouds and swirls. Gum had wiped his off before it had dried, stressing his family would kill him if they saw. Aidan had left his on the whole week, but he was a chronic nail-biter. The polish was shredded by the time the Garrens left on the fifth of July. Iris had reapplied a clear coat twice a day so hers wouldn’t chip. Eventually, of course, it had.
She would never get those cloud nails back.
Iris returned to the porch and sat beside April. She wished she could explain why she was being extra-distant. It would be worth it, once she presented the truth to her parents. They would forgive her once they had closure.
“How’d you sleep?” April asked.
“Good.”
“You don’t remember sleepwalking?”
Iris’s hand twitched. Bright red polish streaked across her finger.
She had woken up in her room. There were no twigs on her feet, no dirt on her quilt. Iris hadn’t gone anywhere last night.
“What?”
“You were wandering out of your room right before the sun came up. Joanna sent you back to bed,” April explained. “She used to do that too, you know, the first few years I came up here,” she added with a nervous giggle. “She freaked me out. I thought it meant the cabin was haunted.”
“When did she stop?”
“After Beth.”
Iris glanced down at her nails. They looked like a bloody mess.
It’s not just me. It’s not just Glory.
If Iris asked Joanna about sleepwalking, would she say anything? Or would she skirt around the truth again? Glory was hiding things last year. Joanna was hiding things now.
Perhaps she always had been.
The family van pulled up in front of the cabin. Joanna stepped out and triumphantly held up grocery bags. “All right, losers, now the real shopping begins.”
* * *
By store number three, Iris was ready to explode. Every time Joanna looked at her, Iris felt her temper spike higher. She wasn’t sure if she even had the right to be angry. Maybe Joanna would have told her about the sleepwalking if she’d asked. Maybe she truly didn’t notice all the strange coincidences. But Iris knew now that she wasn’t just paranoid. Even Aidan, the eternal skeptic, saw the patterns.
Iris tore through a clothes rack, pretending to search for a T-shirt in her size. This tourist trap seemed to cater to old ladies, with cheesy slogans like I’d rather be at the lake in script font.
She had to bring it up. She almost did in the first shop. There was a likely chance Joanna would just gaslight her again, but if Iris didn’t try, the anger was just going burn her from the inside out.
She waited until April was safely on the other side of the store, trying on sunglasses she’d never buy. Joanna nudged Iris, holding a pullover. “Is this cute?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Iris said.
“But for me, though? Is it pathetic to wear tie-dye after forty? What’s the Gen Z consensus?” Normally that would make Iris laugh. But when she finally looked at her mother, her vision burned red.
“Why are we here?” Iris asked sharply. Joanna’s smile faltered for a second.
“This can be the last stop if you’re all shopped out.”
“No, I mean Bad Creek. Why did you want to come back so bad?”
Joanna put the shirt back on the rack. “It’s our place. I’ve spent every summer here. I couldn’t imagine . . . I thought you wanted to come.”
“You thought I wanted to come back to the place where my sister died?”
Joanna made a strangled noise and gave Iris a pained, wide-eyed look. But Iris didn’t falter. The truth was, Iris had wanted to come back too. But she had a real reason. A noble reason. It wasn’t some masochistic urge to revel in her trauma. She had a murder to solve and a curse to break.
“How can you come here year after year?” Iris went on. “You revisit the place where all this bad stuff happened, without talking about it?”
“Iris,” Joanna warned. Her jaw set, eyes glassy.
“What really happened to Beth, Mom?” Iris thought she’d cry, but she was practically yelling over the inoffensive pop music inside the store. A little girl in a stroller perked up to stare at her, but Iris didn’t care. “Do you even want to know, or do you want to just keep pretending everything’s fine? When were you going to tell me about the sleepwalking?” Joanna winced. But Iris was on a roll. “What else aren’t you telling me? I’m not a baby anymore. You think I can’t handle it, but I’ve been handling it. All alone. This whole time. So tell me—what happened to Beth? What happened to your daughter?”
Joanna swallowed. They stood in silence, at dueling stance.
For a year, Iris had dreaded the inevitable moment when she’d fragment into a million tiny pieces. But she didn’t think about what would come after. That anything positive could come out of it. Her new sharp edges had the power to cut through bullshit.
“Why did we come back here?” Iris had to know what drove her mother to return to the same place where she’d lost her best friend and her daughter. Was it the same thing that brought Bill Clavey back from Kentucky even after losing his fiancée? She needed someone to finally voice it. If Iris knew what this curse was, she could break its hold.
April swooped in, unaware of the tension, or maybe, like her wife, unwilling to acknowledge it.
“I think the one at the first store was the winner,” she said.
“I’m afraid so,” Joanna agreed. She plucked the car keys from her purse and walked out of the store.
Chapter 25 Gum
Lighting didn’t strike twice, which meant this wasn’t random coincidence. Grandpa had rolled up to Cabin 3 again, on purpose.
Gum fumbled with the laces of his dress shoes. He considered declining the invite, but it wasn’t like he’d get any more sleep this morning. And if he was away from Iris, he couldn’t steal anything else from her. He couldn’t help Glory with her plans.
He dragged himself from his bedroom. He didn’t feel entirely alive when he made it to the kitchen. His dad was eating breakfast at the table, telling his wife about his unlucky fishing this trip, like she could hear him. As if one day she’d wake up and remember everything he’d said. Gum used to do that. Just like he used to pray.
“Are you going with your grandfather?” his dad asked.
The horn honked again.
“Do I have a choice?”
As if he had a choice about anything.
His father didn’t answer directly. He never straight-up said Gum ought to follow the Claveys’ rules, it was just implied. After all, Grandpa controlled his inheritance. He paid for his mom’s medical bills and for their at-home nurse. If Gum bothered to come out, his dad would surely get a nervous look and say, Best to keep that private. And Gum would be too afraid to ask if it was because his dad was unaccepting or just anticipating Bill Clavey’s reaction.
He had no idea what his mom’s reaction would have been. She didn’t react to anything, since he could remember. But his dad kept a diary of every odd blink, every muscle spasm that looked like a nod. Her reaction to certain medication, certain food. Like someday his devotion would cure her. Gum tried not to dwell on what she could have been before, because she wasn’t coming back.
People didn’t come back. Gum was extra-sure of that now. Glory hadn’t been speaking to him at all. The girl in the bathtub, the girl with the hair ribbons—they weren’t other drowned girls of Bad Creek. They were hollow effigies. Something evil was wearing their faces.
And it wanted Gum to do its bidding.
The Cadillac honked. Showtime. Gum went out the front door to see Grandpa parked in the middle of the road, smoking a cigar.
“Good morning,” Grandpa said. He wore a collared shirt and fedora that matched his mustache. “I need some help in my garden today. Mind giving a hand?”
“Sure.”
Grandpa drove with the top down, even though it was much too hot for it. He yapped on and on about character. “Kids these days don’t have it. They’re spoiled. They’re sensitive. They want someone to blame.”
Was he talking about Hudson? Gum wouldn’t be promoted to Number One Grandson out of nowhere. His grades had tanked to a new low last quarter, and he’d spent the first part of the summer playing video games instead of getting a job.
If Grandpa noticed anything he’d done the past year, it would only make him unhappy. Hudson had to do something to be cast out. But not murder. The Claveys weren’t the cartoonish villains Aidan saw them as.
