From Chapter 6 of
Vengeful Spirits (now discounted at
Amazon and
Smashwords):
“Thank
you,” Phoebe said to the librarian. The floor cried out and the old man shifted in his chair as
she turned to the foyer and heavy set of stairs which led to the second floor.
To her surprise, the wide staircase didn’t make a sound as she climbed. The
rail, darkly stained wood, was cold and smooth in her hand. She rounded the
landing, and saw the second floor was dark.
It’s
just a library.
She
lowered her head and forced legs up the final steps. A small, handwritten sign
read “please turn off lights as you leave” with a switch beneath it. Phoebe
happily flicked the switch, and the room sparked to life. The floor plan
mimicked the level below, with racks of books visible inside a room labeled
“Non-fiction” to her left and another room labeled “Reference” to the right.
She moved toward the right, surprised at the eerie silence of the carpeted
floors. So silent she imagined even the books were listening for the slightest
sound, waiting to fall from the shelves and crush her.
Tall
windows decorated the walls of the reference room, and Phoebe quickly found the
shelves of bound newspapers. They were large books, as wide and tall as the
paper and at least three or four inches thick. Five volumes all together, each
marked with dates on the spine.
“Okay,
Phoebe, where to start,” she whispered to herself. She pulled out the volume
with 1918-1935 on the spine, deciding to start with the train. If what her brother
said was true, she’d need a paper from 1928. The heavy book echoed in the empty
room as she dropped it on the table top. Inside, the pages were obvious
reproductions made on glossy, heavyweight paper.
The
first headline, Doughboys Stop Hun in Belleau Wood, showed pictures of four
local men in uniform along with a map of France. Phoebe’s fingers slid over the
slick pages, turning them gently, one at a time. Some jumped weeks, others only
days. The paper must have been published on an irregular schedule. She passed
Armistice Day, various business announcements in the early twenties, election
results, and finally, on April 30, 1928, the headline she’d been looking for:
Tragedy
Strikes on Rail: 78 Confirmed Dead
The
reproduction, like most of the other pages, was of poor quality. Many of the
words were nearly unreadable because of smudges or age. Phoebe was able to
decode enough to learn the train wrecked just west of town while crossing a
steel deck girder bridge over the Republic River. The engine had skipped the
tracks traveling at approximately 35 miles per hour, and dragged all cars and
passengers over the edge.
Subsequent
pages showed grainy, black and white photos of the rescue efforts. The final
death toll for the tragedy stopped at eighty-one.
A
sigh escaped Phoebe’s lips, long and raspy like a midnight breeze. She hadn’t
realized she’d been holding her breath until so much of it came at once.
Eighty-one people died in a train wreck outside a small town in Kansas. Two
parents die on an icy road in Illinois. Phoebe’s blood became frozen mud. She
closed her eyes, and tried to remember her mother’s face.
She
couldn’t.
A
noise sounded across the second floor—a thump, the sound of a book falling from
a shelf onto the carpeted floor. Phoebe pressed her fingers against the
tabletop until the blood drained away and they were as white and cold as new
snow.
“Hello?”
The
building answered with a quiet, settling creak. Outside, the sun had begun to
set, and the room, with its bright fluorescent lights, was now brighter than
the sky. How long had she been in there?
She
returned the 1918-1935 book to the shelf, and drew out 1936-1948. Another heavy
volume, this one largely filled with the last years of the Great Depression and
World War II. Nothing about a school fire.
It
was a picture in the next volume, 1949-1965, which caused the icy fingers of
terror to encircle Phoebe’s heart—not the picture exactly, but the caption
beneath. The photo was of a young woman, Lucy Hardaway, fifteen. The caption
read:
The
Strangler Takes Another Victim
Phoebe
covered her mouth and stifled a gasp. She scanned the date under the newspaper
flag: September 21, 1957. Another victim? Her fingers worked the pages in
reverse order, checking each until 1955. She found nothing about a first
victim. Maybe an accident. An omission. Maybe the police hadn’t known or the
paper didn’t report it—
Another
sound from across the way.
Phoebe
felt for her bag under the table. She thought of calling EG, telling him to
come pick her up, now. She would run down the stairs, leaving the 1949-1965
book open on the table, open to the picture of Lucy Hardaway, a pretty girl in
black and white with dark curls, glasses, and thick eyebrows. She could…
No.
She
turned past Lucy’s picture, hunting for another mention of the Strangler. A
morbid curiosity took over Phoebe’s fingers. She flipped the next few pages,
working against the fear which clutched her heart and threatened to crush her
lungs. Cars passed on the street below, making strange shapes on the walls with
their headlights. She flinched at every, tiny sound.
January
4, 1958. Another girl, Joan Carpenter, dead of the Strangler, only now, the
reporters had begun to call him—of course they assumed he was male—the Springdale
Strangler. There was mention of another girl in the article, evidently the
first victim, a young woman who lived in the rural area surrounding town.
Evelyn Jones died six months before poor Lucy, but the police only made the
connection after the second death.
With
fevered intensity, Phoebe continued her hunt. The police searched for the
Strangler. He’d gone silent until 1961. The girl’s name was Emma Lee. She had
dark hair, limp and long, her face was long, too. High cheekbones. Phoebe
couldn’t help but think she’d seen the face before, somewhere. She went missing
in June of ’61, and the police feared the worst. The FBI became involved.
She
flipped pages, skipping anything which didn’t mention the Strangler.
July
1, 1961, the FBI and Spring County Sheriff’s Department cornered a man named
Nathaniel Slade in a small house on the heights overlooking the Republican
River. After an eight hour standoff, the law enforcement moved in, shooting
Slade dead. He was unarmed.
They
never found Emma’s body.
