When I was six, my grandmother tells me

she will be an old stone.

In all of my endless, six year old wisdom

I tell her that a stone is a very boring thing to be.

She laughs,

swings me around,

and tells me I will understand,

someday.

When I am sixteen, my niece wears

an old topaz bit, set in silver on a rusting chain.

It was my grandmother's,

maybe, probably.

I'd never seen it til the day after she died, hanging on her mirror.

My grandfather tells me

she wore it every day

tucked under her collar.

And so,

I have a piece of uncut garnet,

set on a silver back,

tucked under my collar.

I think, one day,

I'll be an old, old stone.

a memory lasts longer than one single existence

traveling through time and space

its fibers twisting, expanding and ever-changing

coming back to you in a whisper

a silent reminder that you are loved

déjà vu? perhaps

Justice Rios banged her gavel and every bone in my body dissolved. I couldn’t believe it was finally over. Rick Gowen was going to prison for the rest of his life for the kidnapping and murder of my daughter. His life was over, just as he had ended hers, and mine could finally start again. I sobbed as he screamed his innocence all the way out of the courtroom.

I owed this miracle of due process largely to Detective Wingartt, the 23 year police veteran who stood next to me now, supporting me in more than just the line of duty. My life had been on hold for the last 13 years, since Holly disappeared, waiting, and praying to any God who would listen to please find my baby and the man who took her. 17 months ago Gerald Wingartt knocked on my door and changed my life. I could still hear the words in my mind…

“Good evening. Are you Mrs. Jillian Murphy?” He continued at my nod, “Mrs. Murphy, my name is Detective Gerald Wingartt. I have some information about your daughter. May I come in?”

And then my whole world began to spin and hasn’t stopped since.

On an anonymous tip Gerard and his partner searched a previously combed section of woods and had discovered the bones of a child, bearing the tatters of a dark blue dress, with a delicate gold chain around her neck. Exactly what Holly had been wearing when she disappeared. I still remember the feel of her hair as I swept it aside to zip the back of that dress, and adjusted the chain with the little engraved star charm I had given her for her birthday. Dental records were a match.

Amazingly, DNA evidence had been found on her body, even more amazingly there was a match in something called the Combined DNA Index System which is basically an enormous FBI file full of DNA samples. I couldn’t believe it. They had someone.

Gerard got permission from a judge to return Holly’s gold chain to me before the trial, I think it may have been then that I started falling for him.

“There was a charm, a star, did they find it?” I had asked him tearfully, so overwhelmed.

“No,” He said, “I’m so sorry, they didn’t. It could have been lost anywhere. Or he could have kept it. Sometimes they do.”

A shiver had kissed my spine. I found that this sick, disturbed man having kept something of Holly’s bothered me deeply.

Gerard, seeing my disquiet, distracted me with details of what would come next. He left me his number and told me to call if I needed to talk. I had been through years of therapy and was mostly talked out, but I called anyway. His voice was deep and soothing, and if I closed my eyes I could picture his lips moving.

We grew closer as the trial approached, there was so much information he needed from me, together we helped the prosecution paint a portrait of a living breathing little girl with big hopes and dreams. The process broke me. Gerard helped put me back together again.

He and I agreed to keep our relationship a secret, nothing could interfere with the case, nothing was more important.

Two weeks after the verdict came back he proposed.

I said yes.

He started moving his things into my place last week

I haven’t told him yet, but I’m pregnant. I bought a pair of baby booties today and I’m going to wrap them up in a shoebox to surprise him. He’s going to flip!

After 5 minutes of searching my closet I can’t believe I don’t own a single shoebox. His closet is so crazy well organized and even though he doesn’t like having his stuff touched, I doubt he’ll care if I disturb it for something like this. After some careful poking I pick out a smallish blue box with a hinged lid. Inside are a few trinkets that I explore carefully before setting aside. A gently battered copy of Alice in Wonderland with Leanne Jackson written inside. A bracelet made of scuffed plastic beads that spell out Mercy. A red ribbon about 18 inches long. And a small cardboard box tied with a string. Curiosity was getting the better of me, I had to open the box.

God. I wish I hadn’t.

A scrap of dark blue fabric stared back at me. I heard his voice in my head, “Sometimes they do” Sometimes the monsters keep trophies.

I could hardly breathe. My hands shook so badly that I dropped the box, the fabric still pinched between my fingers. There it was, on the carpet, sparkling in the overhead light.

A tiny gold star with an H engraved on it.

I hadn’t heard the front door, or the footsteps on the stairs.

“Jilly?” Gerard called. Then his voice shifted into something I didn’t recognize, the voice of a monster. “Oh, I wish you hadn’t done that.”

I ran out of paper just as the sun dipped down below the horizon. And I felt the words spin and twirl around my fingertips, begging me to release them. But the light was dying, and I had nowhere to spill the ink. I let my eye lids drop heavy, stopping my eyes from soaking in the moonlight. Stars flickering overhead in a gentle push and pull with the waves crawling up onto the shore. And as my mind crashes into slumber, I look up into a dim chandelier. I hear light, twinkling notes catching on the air. Crystals playing iridescent prisms across the massive expanse of a ballroom. I sway in time with the slight rocking of the room. Gauzy, white tulle wraps my body and flows gently, grazing the water that reaches for my ankles. My bare feet meet the hardwood floors just as my eyes take in the flood pouring out from under the doors surrounding the room. It’s salt water drowning me fast. And I have to let my story out before it creeps up my frame. So I dig my nails deep into flesh. I carve the words and fill them with left over ink. My skin the only place to record my truth. My veins scrawling perfect penmanship down my arms and legs. My ribs covered in thoughts. Careening script across my clavicles and my sternum. And the water flooding faster. Reaching ever closer. Memories digging themselves up and covering my throat as I lift my chin to steal a last breath into my water logged lungs. And I wake just before dawn. I wake in the ocean. Salt stinging my wrists as the blood pools.

There is a house.

There is always a house with a monster locked in its basement or an old witch with a patch over one eye who can show you how you’ll die. The house is always old and rotting with a wooden porch that creaks beneath the feet of children foolish enough to get too close, a tire swing with no tire, cracks in the windows, and a lawn so unkempt that the smallest of those children could get lost inside stalks of tall, reedy grass.

There is a house.

But this one is different.

This one sits along the edge of the Allegheny river in a tiny town called Foxburg, Pennsylvania, a place some would compare to those found in old storybooks filled with fairy godmothers and wishes come true. The house does not have a basement full of old antiques tainted by dark magic or an attic that’s floorboards creak even when nothing lurks overhead but the spiders spinning their sticky webs.

In fact, there is no basement.

In fact, thirteen year old Violet Hinkle sleeps in the attic and gets to watch the stars come out each night through the tiny window Mr. Hinkle constructed in the ceiling when they found out Mrs. Hinkle was pregnant again and Violet would have to switch rooms. Violet likes the privacy and never minded the move (especially not after the skylight was finished) and ten year old Danny is kind of jealous of his big sister’s set up, even though Danny’s room has a window that’s way better if you’re planning on sneaking out of the house. He only did it once, and he didn’t get caught (because Violet came with), but Danny doesn’t like secrets so he won’t do it again.

One hundred and eighty three people live in Foxburg, Pennsylvania.

If you’re getting married, you do it at Riverstone Farm, just one street back from the Hinkle’s house. If you’re getting cold feet, you walk the half mile down the road to Memorial Church of Our Father for some guidance, and if you’re getting really cold feet, you walk the mile and a half back the opposite direction to drink it off at the Allegheny Grille. If said cold feet still persist after that, you head east to St. Petersburg. You do not cross west over Foxburg bridge.

So there is a house and there is a lovely family of four and there is a small town where new faces are seldom seen but always met with kindness, and that is where the story should end instead of begin.

It does not happen on Halloween night. It does not happen in the wake of a thunderstorm that sweeps over the Hinkle’s rooftop and floods its floorboards with horned demons and bloodsoaked chaos.

Violet Hinkles turns fourteen years old, and nine days later, Mr. Hinkle wakes up with a crick in his neck.

It’s nothing to worry about, he assures his wife as he kisses her and the children goodbye. Perhaps this would simply be an expression in other homes, but George Hinkle makes sure to leave a soft whisper of his presence on the cheeks of the three people sitting around the breakfast table before he walks out the door each morning. Today is no different, except for that crick.

By the fourth day, Mrs. Hinkle insists he go see the doctor, so he does. Dr. Kane, too, says it’s nothing to worry about-- just a product of poor sleep. He asks Mr. Hinkle about his sleeping positions, his recent dreams; prescribes a little something for the pain and provides a little piece of paper about spine curvature and proper pillow placement. Mr. Hinkle doesn’t remember much of his dreams, vague outlines of soft, purple shadows and thin lines of silver thread that unwind to spool around his feet. He laughs at the alliteration of the Proper Pillow Placement sheet and follows the advice.

Four days after that, he wakes up unable to lift his left cheek from the top of his shoulder. There are perhaps two inches of space in between, a number not nearly high enough in Mrs. Hinkle’s distraught opinion. She sends the children off for the beginning of their final week of school before summer begins and then stands at her husband’s shoulders, rubbing soothing hands down along his neck and back while he props his cell phone up against his right ear and calls in sick to work for the third time in twenty-six years.

The next day, the fingers of George Hinkle’s left hand do not work. They curl in on themselves like the talon of a red-tailed hawk, and Mrs. Hinkle barely waits for the bus to pick up Violet and Danny before driving her husband directly to the hospital.

Dr. Grumsfield doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Symptoms of Lou Gehrig's with the progression time of a marathon runner on Speed and with no signs of signature neurological damage. After school, Mrs. Hinkle asks their neighbor, Alan, to pick the kids up and bring them to the hospital. Once there, Violet is overly talkative, ignores the wires coming out of her Daddy’s arms and elects to tell him about the boy in class who pulled her hair three times during social studies class but won’t dare do it again because she swears she glared at him so hard, he peed his pants. Danny is quiet. He curls up on the bed next to his father and burrows into him, doesn’t move until Mrs. Hinkle says they have to go, but they’ll come back to visit after school the next day. The kids protest, but they have their final tests of the year, and they can’t be missed.

That night, Violet glances up through the skylight her father made for her and sees nothing but a deep, purple sky and tiny threads of silver light that barely count as stars.

At school the next day, the boy who pulled her hair sits on the opposite side of the room from Violet and immediately stops clicking his pen when he notices her looking at him. She finishes her test early, excuses herself to use the bathroom, and instead sits in the hall against a row of lockers and runs her thumbnail along the length of her wrist until the bell rings.

Back at the hospital, Mr. Hinkle’s left eye will not open and his left pinky toe sticks straight up into the air, seemingly petrified. The nurse who changes his IV lines coughs violently into her arm and quickly excuses herself. An hour later, Dr. Grumsfield meanders unsteadily into the room, his skin sickly pale. Mrs. Hinkle, who has been sitting diligently beside her husband’s bed since seeing the kids off to school, immediately rushes to his side to keep him from collapsing onto the floor. As she is helping him to the seat she’d only just vacated, her neighbor Alan walks into the room with Violet and Danny in tow. Violet runs to find a different doctor to take care of the first, and Danny grabs the cup of water meant for his father and tilts it so that the liquid trickle past Dr. Grumsfield’s suddenly cracked lips.

It all happens very fast after that.

To be continued...

Before Columbus came on his ship;

We had no need for ownership;

Our tribes were tightly knit;

Then you came and forced us to split.

We respected Mother Earth;

We were grateful for her worth;

Then you came and destroyed our lifestyle;

And expected us to reconcile.

You show our home no respect;

The importance of the environment you neglect;

All you do is kill and destroy;

With the diseases and weapons you employ.

You slaughtered our men, women, and children;

After we showed you how to begin;

We taught you how to thrive on this new continent;

Then you turn around and think you are dominant.

Without us you wouldn’t be here;

You tried to make us cower in fear;

This has been our home for thousands of years;

Regardless of all our shed blood and tears.

Our cultures will not be buried in dust;

You will not win, for you are unjust;

You consider us wild and savage;

But you’re the thieves who murdered us in cold blood.

You tried to make us flee;

And forced us to bend the knee;

When will you finally understand?

This was, is, and always will be our land.

The glowing light filtered through your kitchen window like it always did, but this time there was something just a bit off. It wasn't the usual gold, but a deeper, shadowy orange. I could hear the muted laughter and bustling around in the dining room as the annual Thanksgiving was being spread across the table like it was every year.

Still, something just didn't feel right.

I walked into the dining room, watched as my eldest aunt and uncle placed the silver turkey tray in the center of the festive table, right next to the same tattered squirrels all the children loved to play with. I couldn't see their faces as they looked at each other, my aunt and uncle, but I knew underneath the dingy gas masks that they were smiling their doting smiles.

They poured around me, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, parents, each one rooted in muffled conversation and laughter, the tube-like trunks of their masks spilled down their faces, dragging in the food. Pushing my way through, completely overlooked, I had to squint as the grimy sunlight pierced through the curtains.

That's when I saw you, in the middle of the crowd, ignored and maskless as I was though you were the matriarch. Your pale blue eyes caught mine and you came forward. Your frail hands, dry and paper-thin, clasped my cheeks. You were small and trembling, just like you had been right before your demise. Tears glistened in your eyes and I knew now why the sun didn't shine as brightly.

I tried to choke out your name, but you put a finger to my lips, and rejecting the crowd around us you whispered deeply into my ear,

"open the rusted green lockbox."

His phone lights up. Half asleep, he looks at it. A text from Theresa.

You up?

“This can’t be,” he thinks. “Something is wrong.” The phone stirs again. Antother text.

I need to feel you inside of me.

He shoots out of bed and looks out the window. The dirt over her shallow grave has been disturbed. There is a soft knock at his bedroom door. It opens slowly.