The Blanchard sisters and I grew up on the same ice creamsocials and spelling bees; when the beasts took our mothers, we went to thesame funerals. Then Emmalyn got a hole clawed in her belly, and all of a suddenwe were strangers from each other and everyone else. Emmalyn was thirteen,golden-haired and innocent as a picture in a storybook Bible. Everyone lovedher, and they didn’t stop when her body got dragged out of the river. Pryor hasa real knack for pretending that murders aren’t murders, but even our piss-poorexcuse for a sheriff won’t overlook the desiccated corpse of his favorite daughter.
When I saw the story printed in the paper, I was wrigglingout of my Sunday shoes and hoping my daddy would say anything besides what he’dsaid when we got home, which was: “Esther Grace, I hope you learned something.”He preached a strange, frightening sermon at Emmalyn’s funeral that morning,banged his fists on the pulpit so hard that bruises were already forming on hisknuckles. I’d been scared, a little. He never got angry at funerals. He nevergot angry at anything.
“There’s something unholy in this town,” he said now. Hesounded like a preacher but didn’t look like one with the sleeves of his linenfuneral suit shoved up to his elbows and his fingers wrapped around the neck ofa bottle.
Seeing how worried he was, I folded the paper up so hecouldn’t see the front page. There was a nasty color picture of Emmalyn’s bodycovered with swamp muck, the hole in her belly jammed full of rotten leaves. Isaid, “There’s always been something unholy in this town.”
“Not like this. It’s never been like this before.” He stood,a little shaky. “But not for long. I got us someone.”
What that was supposed to mean, I didn’t rightly know. Butthe purewater man showed up a day later with a flannel shirt draped over hisbony arm and a flask of holy water hanging around his neck. I had to surrendermy bedroom to him, but Daddy promised he would just be staying a little while.Long enough to find out who murdered Emmalyn Blanchard.
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The purewater man had eyes like pieces of glass buried at thebottom of a creek. I always felt strange around him, like something wascrawling up my spine into my skull, but I figured as the preacher’s daughter Iwas supposed to be able to make small talk with anyone. And mostly he obligedme, overlooking Emmalyn’s murder to ask if I liked school, why the chicken coopin our backyard was padlocked, how it was that he’d been invited to a PTAluncheon. In case you were wondering: my classes were about as dull as watchingour little town get used up and dried out and abandoned, we’d already lost twohens to demons this year, and PTA luncheons were prime opportunities forsussing newcomers out.
I told him he should go to the luncheon, not for any goodreason besides that I wanted him and his glittering eyes out of the house for afew hours. When he came home, he said, “I see that Pryor’s population ofmothers is dwindling.”
His spiny northern accent made me want to laugh sometimes,but not then. He sounded solemn and looked older than his thick black crop ofhair suggested, and I was inclined to think he really cared that our meeklittle species was dying off. “Pryor hasn’t been well,” I said.
“Do you have any idea why that is?”
I felt like he could see right through me, bones and organsand all. I folded my arms in front of my chest and said I didn’t know.
I wanted to tell him. It’s just that the secret didn’tbelong entirely to me. Emmalyn was dead, but her sister wasn’t. And MarthaBlanchard didn’t trust anyone. I doubt she’d ever have told me about themonsters if Emmalyn hadn’t thought my hereditary holiness might be of some useto them. It wasn’t, but I’m a decent shot and the monsters hate that even morethan memorized psalms or holy water.
When I told Martha that I wanted to consult the purewaterman, she was sitting in her bedroom windowsill with the screen yanked out ofthe frame and laying in her lap. Standing below in the Blanchards’ yard,letting dead grass scratch my ankles, I was already halfway to irritable evenbefore she said, “Are you out of your head? You wanna get burned at the stake?”
“Hush. He’ll wake up.” In the downstairs bedroom, hiddenfrom view by a bundle of blue lace curtains, Sheriff Blanchard slept in sheetshe reportedly hadn’t changed since his wife was still alive. I wasn’t more thanten paces from his window, and I couldn’t count on Martha to make excuses forme if he heard us.
“I don’t care what he thinks,” Martha said, letting thescreen fall to her bedroom floor with a pronounced thud. She climbed out thewindow and shimmied down the drainpipes, using the empty flower boxes on thewindows as footholds. When she reached the porch bannister, she wrapped herarms around it and slid the rest of the way down. Bitterly, she told me, “Heblames me for what I didn’t do, anyway, so I may as well do what I want.”
She could have been talking about a hundred differentthings, but she meant Emmalyn dying. Sheriff Blanchard knew Martha and Emmalynhad both snuck out of the house on the night that Emmalyn died, and he’d beatenMartha bloody trying to get an explanation out of her that she flat-out refusedto give.
“If the purewater man deals with the monsters, provesthey’re real and responsible for all this,” I told her, “you can tell yourdaddy the truth.”
“And if the purewater man lies and tells him that I’m somesort of witch, I’ll
