A gorgeous young woman walked across the grass towards them. She was wearing a stylish yellow dress and sandals and carried an expensive-looking vintage leather backpack. No, it was a briefcase. Her skin was dark brown and her hair short in tight curls.
Dianne immediately stiffened.
“Stella Sprague?” The words whooshed out as the woman hurried over the dry, crunching grass. Maybe it was her fatigue and the heat, but the earth seemed to call Stella’s name, echoing the words rushing out from the young woman’s mouth.
Dianne peered up at her. “You got the wrong person, lady. I told you that before. Don’t come around here no more.” Dianne dragged on her cigarette and looked away.
Stella watched a few beads of sweat roll down the young woman’s forehead. Dianne slowly pushed herself upright, looming over the interloper. The young woman hesitated, not sure what to do, as Dianne spit to the side, onto the ground, rolling her tongue in her mouth, searching for the right words, the right tone. “Jericho Centre’s back that way. Visitors got to register, if you got family to see. No one right here to visit. We ain’t nobody anyone knows, just two old ladies. See you.”
The woman handed a business card to Dianne. “I’m Malmuria Grant-Patel. Mal, people call me.” Her voice was shaky.
“I see. Nice name. You give me one of those little cards on Monday. I don’t got memory problems, not me.”
“Are you Stella Sprague?”
Dianne stood in front of Stella. “Never heard of anyone by that name.”
“Look, I’m a journalist. Sort of. Well, I’m a researcher. Kind of. A blogger.”
“Isn’t that something. Good for you. I’m an old lady. Good for me. We have to go make crafts for old Nurse Calvin. I play the banjo. We’re having pork chops tonight. Applesauce. Mustard pickles.”
Stella knew that Dianne was pretending to be slow. She wanted the woman to go away. Stella felt removed from her body, a shadow watching from the edges, watching Dianne towering over this nervous young woman who kept rubbing her jaw.
“I’m investigating something that happened decades ago. I guess it’s what you’d call a cold case. It’s a cult. I’ve been doing research. I didn’t plan on doing this. I interviewed this woman named Flora for my podcast. It was about mental health. I know this doesn’t make any sense. She told me how when she was young she ended up in this . . . cult sort of thing. Oh my God, I know I’m not making much sense. Look, I think you’re in danger, Stella.”
Stella saw that this woman, Mal, was close to tears. She felt her heart begin to thud, a far-off drum sounding the alarm. The grass was spinning. Everything shifting, tilting, slow motion, the words drawn out, nightmare words. Mercy Lake. The lodge. Sodality. Franklin Seabury.
Stella closed her eyes. All words floating up. Seahorses swaying. She opened her eyes and rubbed them.
A blurry Dianne stood in front of Stella, her house dress wrinkled — Dianne a reaper, with her left arm held up in proclamation and her right arm extended, finger pointed at the main road. But the woman’s words kept flowing.
Warning. Followed. Not all dead. One survived.
The woman in the yellow dress who called herself Mal reached in her bag and pulled out a piece of paper that flipped up in the breeze. Her voice came back into focus.
“Look, I’m from here originally. Well, my mother is, actually. And my grandmother. Anyway, I found some links.”
Links. Connections. Grooming. Girls. Cynthia.
“I want you to help me. So I can help you. I know that’s Stella sitting there. I know she doesn’t talk. I tried to find her uncle but I was too late. They’re watching you. Did you know that? You can’t trust anybody. I want to help you.”
“No, she’s safe here. She don’t talk. She don’t know nothing about nothing. You need to go away now. You can’t do no good here. Stella’s got me. Time to go now, quickity-quick.”
“I went to Florida before I came here. I talked to Sally Seabury. Well, sort of. She had a stroke. She’s really old now. She’s in a nursing home. Sally told me what her daughter said, what her daughter gave you to keep safe.”
Stella’s shadow-self settled over her body, anchoring into her bones, adrenaline surging through her spine, her stomach. Were they talking about the postcard? Stella heaved herself up. Dianne and Malmuria looked at her. A crow flew overhead croaking, several small birds following it, diving, attacking. And still this young woman, this Mal, would not stop.
I know who you are. You need to talk to me. You need to let me know what it is you have. We need to stop them. I’ll go the whole wide world to figure this out.
Over the Mountain to
Seabury Gorge.
Then
It’s pouring rain in the morning, so Cynthia does not come for the bike ride. Stella listens to the public radio station, all news and classical music and radio drama shows. She tries to sketch the garden view, but it’s blurry from the rain smeared against the window. She does crossword puzzles. Her head doesn’t hurt. Maybe she’s pushing her luck, Stella thinks. Down in the kitchen, she looks through the old recipe books, looks at the commonplace book, empty with nothing written on the thick, yellowed paper. She sits at the kitchen table and tries to sketch on the old pages, but her pencil won’t work on the paper. The lead smudges on her fingers and falls from the page in grey dust. Stella gently shakes the old book over the floor, wondering if anything will fall out but nothing does, only the whisper of the pages rubbing together.
Stella places the book back on the shelf. She knows what a commonplace book is because her mother once called her father’s notebook a scrapbook. It was not a
