Little Girls(103)

When she turned to Sadie, she expected to find that the girl had vanished. But she was still there, having in fact taken a step closer to Laurie while she had been going through the photographs. The girl’s bare feet were black with mud. There was an absence of expression on her face.

“I had no idea he did those horrible things to you. You weren’t evil. An evil man did evil things to you, but you weren’t evil. You just needed someone to help you.”

“He did it right in here, in this place.” Sadie’s voice was flat, unemotional.

“Sadie, had I known, I would have helped you. I would have.”

“You knew.”

“Honey, no—how could I know such a thing?”

“Because I told you.”

“I just thought you were a bully. I just thought you . . . for some reason, that you’d changed. . . .”

“I told you what he was doing to me. You called me a liar. We climbed up the tree so I could show you where he did it to me. Right in here. Right in here.”

“No, no—you climbed the tree. I watched you.”

“You didn’t want me to tell on him,” Sadie said. “You thought the police would take you away from your family so you didn’t want me to tell on him. He kept doing it and you didn’t want me to tell.”

Laurie tried to speak but couldn’t. Suddenly, a part of her had returned to that afternoon, watching Sadie climb the tree, her cheap black shoes scrabbling for purchase on the low-hanging branches. Had she gone up, too?

“You didn’t want me to tell,” Sadie droned on, “and you got mad at me. You said I was making it up. You got very mad, Laurie.”

Had she gone up? Had they both been on the branch that day? Insanely, she thought of that inspirational poster again, the one with the kitten dangling from the branch with the caption that read HANG IN THERE!

“You got mad,” Sadie said. “You—”

“No!” Laurie shouted. She dropped the flashlight and clamped her hands to her ears. “No! Stop it!”

Had she gone up there and gotten mad?

“—pushed me,” finished Sadie.

Laurie screamed until her throat ruptured. In her mind’s eye, she could see Sadie losing her balance, swinging down one side of the limb, her hands laced together around the limb . . . then snapping apart as she dropped through the roof of the greenhouse. She could see it, just as she had seen it a hundred times before in her nightmares . . . only this time, her perspective had changed. The angle was different. This time, she watched Sadie Russ fall to her death while she sat up in the tree. She watched Sadie from above.

Weeping, Laurie collapsed to the floor. Only vaguely was she aware of Sadie’s dirty bare feet shuffling toward her.

“So now I’ve come back for you.”

“I won’t go,” Laurie sobbed into the dirt. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

“Then I will throw Susan down the well and wish you dead.”

“Please—”

“Eeny, meeny, miney, moe. Who’s it going to be?”

Laurie propped herself up. Her whole body hitched with sobs. As she stared at Sadie, the little girl’s wounds began suppurating. Blood spilled from the gashes in her throat while great red magnolias bloomed beneath her filthy checkerboard dress. For the first time, she could see the jagged geometry of broken glass jutting from the girl’s ghost-white flesh.

“I’ve been following you forever,” Sadie said. “I’m always just off to the side, watching you. You saw me that day in the car.” Sadie’s lips stretched into a grimace. “You couldn’t handle it so your mind shut down. It was fun for a while—I like games—but now I’m tired of it. So if you won’t do what I say, I will play with Susan. We’ll play hard, Laurie. I’ll haunt her and drive her mad. I’ll do things to her. Don’t you remember the terrible things I can do?”

Laurie sobbed.

“I can get at her any time I want. You know that’s true. There’s only one way to protect her. Kill yourself.”

“Please . . .”

“It’s you or your daughter,” Sadie said.

“Okay,” she moaned. “Okay—me. I’ll pay for it. Please—leave my daughter alone.”

“Kill yourself and I will,” said Sadie.

Her vision bleary, she felt around for the knife.

“No,” Sadie barked. She extracted a triangular wedge of broken glass from one of her wounds, and extended it toward Laurie. “Use this. The same glass that cut me.”

The glass was weightless in her hand. She managed to come to a kneeling position once again. When she looked at the glass, a part of her recoiled at how dirty it was . . . and then she laughed at the absurdity of such a thought.

“Cut,” said Sadie Russ.

Laurie cut.





Ted had to smash a window to get in the house. No one had answered when he knocked on the door. He went around to the side of the house, but the door there was locked, too. He picked up a large stone from the garden and was about to send it hurling through the bay windows when he thought he heard Susan’s voice screaming for him. He looked around and couldn’t see her. The storm was playing tricks with his head. Then he sent the stone sailing.