The Overnight Guest(27)

Josie moved to the bottom of the stairs and looked up.

“Mom? Dad?” she called out. No answer. She couldn’t lift her left hand to place it on the banister so she hugged the right side, her shoulder grazing the wall to steady herself.

She should have turned around and gone right back down the steps, but she couldn’t stop her hand from pushing open her parents’ bedroom door and stepping over the threshold. The room was dim, the sun diluted by the curtains that covered the windows. The air smelled out of place but familiar. A prickle of fear buzzed through her.

“Mom, Dad,” Josie whispered, jiggling the bed. “It’s time to get up.” There was no answer. It was too quiet.

Her eyes drifted to the right where a sunburst of blood tattooed the wall next to the bed. She followed the scarlet spray downward to where a figure was slumped in the corner, eyes wide, a fist-sized hole in her chest. Josie couldn’t tear her gaze from the horror in front of her. It vaguely resembled her mother, but how was that possible? The twisted grimace on her face was one out of a horror film. Her blood-soaked nightgown clung to her skin.

The cord to the powder blue telephone next to the bed was ripped from the wall and lay in a jumbled heap beside her mother.

A strange numbness spread through Josie’s limbs and her ears filled with the thrum of her heartbeat. She stumbled from the room.

“Dad?” she cried out. “Daddy?” She careened toward her bedroom but stopped abruptly. On the floor, peeking from the doorway, was a hand, closed as if trying to make a half-hearted fist. Josie didn’t want to see what that hand was attached to, but she knew. Her father. But she didn’t want to see what he had become. Still, she moved forward. The glint of a gold wedding ring winked up at her.

Josie let out a tremulous breath and looked around the door frame. Her father’s face was gone, replaced with an unrecognizable canvas of blood and bone and gray matter. A scream lodged in her throat, she turned, and in her hurry to get away, Josie felt the give of soft flesh as her bare foot struck her father’s hand. In terror, she ran down the stairs, her feet barely touching the steps. She flung open the front door and stepped out into the unrelenting sunshine and started running.

At half past seven in the morning, Matthew Ellis was heading past his daughter and son-in-law’s farm just a mile from theirs down on Meadow Rue. He was on his way to town to meet up with some of the other old-timers for coffee at the feed store.

Matthew saw it weaving back and forth across the road from about a hundred yards away. Behind the shimmer of heat rising from the asphalt, Matthew, at first glance, thought it was a deer that had gotten hit by a car.

As he drove closer, he realized that the battered, bloody figure was no animal, but a person, hunched over with pain careening from one side of the road to the other.

Matthew later told investigators that it was like coming across a zombie from one of those old movies. It was dead eyed and lurching, and my heart nearly stopped when I saw who it was.

If Josie was aware of the truck approaching, she gave no indication. Her grandfather pulled off to the side of the road and leaped from his truck.

“Josie?” he asked. “What happened? What are you doing?” Josie acted as if she didn’t hear him, just kept walking. Not knowing what to do, Matthew finally grabbed Josie by the shoulders and forced her to look at him.

“Josie,” he said, staring into her red, unfocused eyes. “What happened? Where are you going?”

“To your house,” Josie managed to croak. It was an odd response, Matthew thought, since Josie was heading in the wrong direction. Josie’s arm was swollen and caked with dried blood and her arms and legs were slashed with scratches that were too many to count. He led Josie to his truck and helped her inside.

“What happened, Shoo?” Matthew asked, using the nickname he had given Josie as a toddler when she would follow him around everywhere. “Shoo fly, shoo,” he’d tease, and Josie would giggle and buzz after him. “What happened?” he asked in alarm. “Was there an accident?”

“I thought there must have been an accident at home,” Matthew told the deputy when he arrived on the scene. “It was the only thing that made sense at that moment. They were leaving for the state fair early that morning. They should have been on the road already. I decided to take Josie back to her house. I never imagined I’d find what I did.”

When Matthew and Josie pulled down the lane and parked behind two vehicles in the drive—his son-in-law’s Chevy truck and the minivan that Lynne drove. The only vehicle missing was Ethan’s truck.

This was where Matthew took another look at his granddaughter. A bright red rash feathered her cheeks, her hair was tangled and unbrushed, her eyes swollen and bloodshot as if she’d been crying. She was barefoot and dirty and it looked like someone took a switch to her legs. It was a closer look at Josie’s arm that caused Matthew’s throat to close up. He’d seen injuries like this before. “Josie, what happened to your arm,” Matthew asked.

Next to him in the truck, Josie forced her eyes open and looked down. Her arm was bloody and swollen and dimpled like a golf ball where the buckshot had embedded her skin.

Despite the hot morning, Josie began to shiver.

“Where is everyone?” Matthew asked.

Josie looked out the window toward the second floor of the house.

“Up there?” Matthew asked, his voice filled with fear. Josie nodded. “Do I need to call for help?”