Лайза Макманн - Cryer's Cross

Kendall remains silently horrified as she tries to comprehend. The souls of the dead boys. . beaten into the desk? Trapped there, angry, their business undone. . stuck away in storage all these years, only to be set free whenever they found a body to go into? It was impossible. No one would believe it. Yet here she was, with two of the most respected people of Cryer’s Cross, and neither was denying it.

“We know about the voice,” old Mr. Greenwood says abruptly, surprising everyone. Then he glances at

Kendall, measuring her. “If you repeat this, I will deny it. But I have heard the whisper too.”

Kendall’s eyes spring open wide. “You have?”

He nods and looks back at the floor, as if he can’t look her in the eye. “I didn’t know where it came from. Didn’t pay attention to that desk in particular as I shoved the desks around.” He wipes his eyes with his hand. “Thirty-five, one hundred, buzzing around my ears, those numbers taunting me. I thought it was me. I thought I was going senile. Post-traumatic stress or something. The voice sounded like. . like

Samuel.”

“It said things to me in Nico’s voice,” Kendall whispers. “Tiffany and Nico both sat at that desk.”

“Yes, Jacián told me. We’ve pieced it together,” Hector says. “He said he heard whispers when he touched it too.” Hector looks up, out the open door to the empty hallway. “The sheriff will be coming back soon. He knows of our hunch about the desk, but he doesn’t know what to believe, doesn’t want to commit to a story so unnatural. I don’t blame him — two old coots like us with a crazy hunch. But we’re going to remove that desk. Not to worry.”

Kendall nods. “Thank you.” She is flooded with relief, so glad she is no longer alone in this.

“He’s going to ask you what you remember. It’s up to you what you want to say when he asks you questions. But as far as the people of Cryer’s Cross and the national news networks know, we’re all now looking for an elusive kidnapper and murderer.” He pauses, and his voice softens. “Maybe it’s best, for your sake, if it stays that way.”

Kendall sinks back into the pillows, feeling a little light-headed.

When the sheriff comes in with Mrs. Fletcher, Hector smiles at Kendall and squeezes her hand.

“Thank you for visiting, gentlemen,” Mrs. Fletcher says to the men. “It means a lot that you came to see her.”

Hector tips his hat. “Miss Kendall is a special girl, a good friend to me and my grandchildren,” he says, old eyes shining. “She is like family.” He gets to his feet, and old Mr. Greenwood moves to do the same.

Hector looks at him and holds out a hand. “Ready?”

“I don’t need your help,” Old Mr. Greenwood grumbles.

She told the sheriff that she didn’t remember anything, only that she felt like she’d been drugged, not in control of her actions. Tests couldn’t confirm any drugs in her body, but the reporters got anonymously tipped off nonetheless.

She sits in the hospital still, three days later, the small stream of visitors having dissipated. The local

TV news is on, and Kendall is watching people arrive for the burial service for Nico and Tiffany. It’s a big deal for southwest Montana. It’d be a big deal anywhere. Maybe seventy or eighty strangers mill around the grave site, those oddities who’d gotten sucked in by the story and feel, in some unexplainable way, connected to the two missing teens. It’s weird to see them. But even weirder to see people she knows and sees every day, standing so solemnly, all dressed up. She sees Nico’s and Tiffany’s extended families up front, the camera invading their grief.

She sees her own parents, looking older than what she thinks them to be. She sees the Greenwoods and the Shanks arriving with some of the other people of Cryer’s Cross, and she’s struck by how horribly often the little town has had to gather all at once like this over the past five months, stopping everything for another tragedy, then trudging onward with life.

The caskets hang suspended over the graves in plot sections that have no patriarchs, no matriarchs.

Teenagers aren’t supposed to die. Kendall pulls an extra pillow to her chest and hugs it, wondering why on earth she convinced her mother to go to the memorial and leave her here alone during this.

She sees Hector and the Obregons. Marlena in a black dress, Jacián in a dark suit with a white shirt, no tie. They find seats, and Jacián jiggles his foot up and down as they wait for it to begin. And finally it does.

A few minutes into it, the TV news anchor cuts in and brings breaking news of something else, a fire downtown or something, and the service is gone. Kendall turns off the TV and stares at the ceiling, remembering Nico in her own private way. His smile, the light in his eyes. How he’d do anything for her, and she for him.

She thinks about their romance, how it came as a by-product, an experiment in their friendship. Their parents always talked about them being together forever. It was just a given as they grew up.

She thinks about how she never really felt comfortable calling him her boyfriend until after he was gone.

He was in love with her, she knew. But she just loved him. It wasn’t the same. He was such a good person that she knew she should be in love with him. Who wouldn’t? But there was no passion. It was sweet, she realizes now, and that’s all it was. She thinks about what was special with them. How kissing him wasn’t all that important. But loyalty? Loyalty was everything.

The tears stream down her face for the goodness that Nico was. For the memories she will never forget. For all the times he stood up for her, the only girl in their class, and for all the times she beat him honestly, at soccer or tests or a footrace down to the river. She cries for all the people he won’t get to help, for the diploma he’ll never earn, for his parents and family, who will never be the same again. For the hole in her heart left by the loss of a best friend.

And then she cries for the way he died. She knows what he went through, and she can only hope he was so under the influence of the possessed souls in the desk that he didn’t know what horror he was doing to himself. She wonders whose voice he heard. Maybe it was Tiffany’s. He’d be the guy to want to save someone in trouble, there’s no doubt about that. She’ll never know the answer to that one.

It was the OCD that saved her. She knows that. And as much as she hates how it rules and ruins her everyday life, she vows that she will never complain about it again.

She’s sitting up in a chair, showered and slightly exhausted from the effort, but still wishing she could just bust out of the hospital — when the phone rings. She shuffles over to it and answers, her voice still husky but no longer sore from all the beatings it took.

“Hello,” she says.

“Hey.”

Her stomach twists. “Hey. . How are you?”

It’s quiet on the line, and for a minute Kendall thinks Jacián might have hung up. But then he speaks.

“I’m fine. I’m. . I just wondered if you were doing okay. Is this a bad time?”

“No. I mean, yes, I’m doing okay. No, it’s not a bad time.” She sits down on the edge of the bed. “I saw you on TV, at the memorial service. . ”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t on for long before they cut to the next tragedy, though. You looked nice.”

“Thanks. Look, Kendall?” he sounds anxious.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry to bother you. I know this is a tough time for you, with Nico and all, and you probably don’t want to see me. But I’ve just been thinking about you. . God. All the time. Do you mind if I come up to your room?”