The girl balanced her chin on her fist. “Nope.”
“How are things at home? Does Jeremiah have any problems with his brother? Or his parents?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about problems with other people? Does he have any trouble with bullies? Are there kids who give him a hard time?”
“No. Everybody knows Adrian is on the football team, so they don’t mess with Jeremiah.”
I tried to sound casual with my next question. “What about adults?”
Anna’s brow crinkled. “What do you mean?”
“Well, has anyone been bothering him? Or making him uncomfortable? I know you and he are really close, Anna. Jeremiah probably tells you things he wouldn’t tell anybody else. Even his parents. Know what I mean? And if there’s something like that, I need to know about it, even if he told you to keep it a secret.”
Anna sat silently for a long time, and I could see on her pretty face that she was struggling with what to say. Finally, she spoke softly while staring at her feet. “We’re not.”
“Not what?”
“We’re not close. We’re not friends anymore.”
“You and Jeremiah? Since when?”
“I don’t know. A while.”
“Do your parents know?”
“I didn’t tell them about it.”
“Why not?”
“Mom’s got her own problems. She and Dad have been crying a lot. They don’t think I know, but I know. I figured they didn’t need me bothering them with my stuff.”
When I heard this, I had two more things worrying me.
Something was wrong in Trina’s life, and she hadn’t told me about it. And Anna had ended her friendship with Jeremiah without telling her mother. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree in that family. I loved Trina, but people sometimes saw her as cold, because she shared so little of herself.
“So what happened between you and Jeremiah? Why aren’t you friends anymore?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Come on, Anna. You two have been best buddies since kindergarten. Something must have happened.”
“I just don’t want to be friends with him. Does he have to be my friend?”
“No. He doesn’t. But he’s missing, and here you are looking for him. That makes me think you still like him.”
“Well, I don’t.” I watched tears begin to slip down her cheeks. Her lips pushed together, and her eyes were red. “I just want to go home now. Can you take me home, Shelby?”
“Sure. Of course. I’ll take you home.” I got up from the bench, but then I knelt in the grass in front of her and brushed the tears away from her cheeks. “Hey, Anna, you know you can tell me anything, right?”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Well, this is really important. Do you have any idea at all what might have happened to Jeremiah?”
I saw a look of terror spread across this little girl’s face. Honestly, I’d never seen anyone look so scared. She cried harder and threw her arms around my neck and hugged me as if I were the only one who could save her from whatever evil thing was out there.
Then she whispered in my ear, barely getting the words out.
“I think the Ursulina got him.”
Chapter Seven
The Ursulina.
It’s a story as old as the town. I’m sure you know about Bigfoot and the Yeti and Sasquatch, those shaggy eight-foot monsters that walk upright through the forest. Our creature is like that, but with a twist. The legend of the Ursulina says that it can also take human form. A pioneer family in the old, old days found that out when they rescued a starving fur trader and let him spend the night in their cabin. They awoke to the horror of a giant brown beast with nine-inch claws and curved fangs who proceeded to feast on every one of them.
So you can understand why we’re still a little nervous about strangers around here.
Dad told me about the Ursulina when I was only five years old. I loved stories like that, the scarier the better. Tourists love it, too. In the fall, we hold an annual festival called Ursulina Days. The town sells Ursulina T-shirts and mugs and magnets. People dress up in Ursulina costumes, and true believers come from around the world to search our woods for the monster. We even offer a cash prize of one hundred thousand dollars to the first person who brings in an Ursulina, alive or dead. So far, no one has collected the money.
Nine months before Jeremiah disappeared, Ursulina Days fell over my twenty-fifth birthday weekend on Halloween. Monica recruited me to be part of the events. In addition to her job as the sheriff’s department secretary, Monica was volunteer board chair for the Friends of the Library. She was planning a Halloween event for kids on that Saturday, and Monica always gets what she wants. She may be quirky and grandmotherly, but if you get in her way, she’ll give you a little giggle and then mow you down.
I’ve mentioned that I sing, right? I play guitar, and I write songs, too. I don’t claim to be very good, but I’ve done it since I was a little girl. Every now and then I’ll let my arm get twisted to perform at story time for the local kids. So Monica asked me to write an Ursulina song for the Halloween event. She already had an artist doing scary decorations and a writer who’d written a children’s story about the Ursulina that he was going to read aloud to the kids. She wanted me to do the music, and of course, I couldn’t say no to her. I didn’t find out until after I’d agreed that the writer who would be working with me was Keith Whalen.
It didn’t bother me at the time. Yes, I’d had a major crush on Keith when he was a teacher and I was a student, but that was years ago. Of course, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still find him attractive.
Keith owned a rambler on fifty-or-so acres of hunting land at the end of a dead-end road off the main highway. Most of the land was undeveloped, but there were a few trails that had been there for decades and a creepy little jewel of a lake hidden away in a wooded valley. Trees grew right out of the water, and their branches drooped like Spanish moss. With not much sunlight breaking through the treetops, it looked like a pond out of a Grimm fairy tale where scary things might lurk below the surface. We called it Black Lake. The Striker girls used to swim there now and then during the summers, because it wasn’t far from Trina’s house.
I went to Keith’s place around Labor Day to talk about the Halloween show. His wife, Colleen, was there when I arrived. I knew her pretty well, because she worked at Ellen’s mini-mart. She was always meek and quiet, with a cute face and mousy brown hair cut into bangs, the kind of woman who looked as if she would melt in a spring shower. I could tell immediately that things weren’t good between her and Keith. It was nothing they said, but I recognized the faces of two people who were going through the motions of marriage and life. I’m sorry to say that my instinct was to blame her for making him unhappy. I still saw Keith as this complicated, interesting, romantic figure from my school days. He was my Heathcliff, and being with him gave me the same goosebumps I’d felt as a teenager.
He took me to a writer’s cottage on their property that he’d converted from the family barn. It was on the other side of a hill a quarter mile from the main house and painted apple red. You could see Keith’s personality in the place, with its hardwood floors, 1920s-era posters of Paris and London, jazz playing from hidden speakers, and a loft where (I could tell) he often slept, rather than in bed with his wife. He had bookshelves filled with dozens of classic novels, everything from Cannery Row to The Moonstone. He kept a little shrine, too, of his military days, just mementos hung on a bulletin board near his desk. Photographs of friends he’d lost. His dog tags. A silver-and-blue St. Benedict medal on a chain. His Purple Heart. I wanted to ask him about those days, but I could tell that some subjects were off-limits.