Page 109 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow
“The affair is irrelevant. That’s why I didn’t confront you or tell Sam. The parts that bothered me were lines like this.” She holds up the letter and reads. “Yes, I know we need to find someone before the end of the summer. I’m on it. Your in-laws leave in a week, and Harris goes back early for class prep. That’d be the ideal opportunity, when they’re gone but a few people are still passing through. We have time.”
My gut goes cold. “That was to my mother?”
Josie glances over and nods. “I’m sorry, Sam. I really am.”
“But I had to know.” I look at Smits. “You never killed anyone for the sacrifices, right? And it was my father and grandfather who knew about them.”
He doesn’t look at me. “Josie, hon. Read that again. It was just me talking about getting someone in to do some work around the property. Best timing was when just Sam and her mom were here, but there were still people passing through, looking to take on odd jobs.”
“The shed,” I whisper.
They both look my way.
I turn to Smits. “You or my mother found the journal when the shed was being rebuilt. Just before I was born. It’d been lost. Someone in my family decided to stop passing along the story of the nekkers.That’s when our fortunes nosedived—and when the local disappearances stopped. You and Mom resurrected the old practice.”
He straightens. “All right. Yes. I found the journal. I gave it to your mom. We were…”
“Good friends,” Josie says sarcastically.
“We were friends, and I knew she liked historical documents. That’s what she did, right? A history teacher. She deciphered it and told me, and at first, it was a lark. We were young and goofing around.”
“Goofing around with folk magic requiring human sacrifice?” I say.
“It wasn’t like that.At all.But I remembered a story from my family, about the nekkers. Then you were born and…” He exhales. “When it came to your health, Sam, your mother was neurotic. Terrified you’d inherit the gene for early dementia. Her dad had just been diagnosed, and your mom was… not in a good place. I agreed to help perform the bonding ritual to make her feel better. But we never killed anyone.” He points at the letter. “That says I was going tofindsomeone. Not kill them.”
“Find a victim,” Josie says.
“No, hon. Absolutely not. We did it for you, too. Protecting Sam from that terrible disease but also, if my family could benefit, I wanted that. And it worked. Everything got better for both families. Until Austin died and Sam’s dad…”
He looks at me. “I hate to say this, Sam, after everything you’ve been through, but your father wasn’t a good person. Part of that magic was about protecting you and your mother from him. From his temper. I told your mom that the horseman trampled Austin, but I’m not completely sure it wasn’t your father. I wanted to protect you. You and your mother. From your father, in life and after his death.”
And here’s where it all breaks down. Oh, his story has been tattered since he started, but with this, it explodes, as he’s unable to keep from casting himself as the hero. With this, the lies shine blindingly bright, because I could sooner see my father as a closet serial killer than an abusive father and husband.
That lie scatters the veil I’ve pulled over my father’s memory. The shroud that keeps me from remembering his kindness and hisgentleness and his goodness and his love, because if he’d murdered Austin Vandergriff, all my memories had to be wrong. They’re not.
I say my mother and I didn’t get along after Dad’s death, and it was my fault, lashing out, but we’d never been close. She might have done this “for me,” but it was my father who’d been the light and warmth in my life… as I’d been in his, and when that sun went out, I was left with the cold and distant star of my mother.
Smits is lying. He’s constructed a story woven of half-truths and outright lies. But I’m not calling him on it just yet, because I still need something from him.
“Where is Ben?” I ask.
Smits sighs, the sound bone-deep, the put-upon grown-up retaining patience when a child asks for the ridiculous and impossible.
“I don’t know, Sam. I already told you—”
“You’ve told me three versions of the story. He left because you snapped at him. No, he left because you said I’d better not be paying him. No, the real reason he left is because he staged a fake legend… which you’ve just admitted isn’t fake at all.”
“Answer her question, Dad,” Josie says. “Where is Ben?”
“I don’t know, hon. He took off—”
She pulls out her gun. I startle and quickly glance over, trying to catch her eye, to tell her no, please don’t escalate this, but she won’t look my way.
“Josie,” her father says, sharp but calm, as if she kicked him during a tantrum.
“Where. Is. Ben.”
“I don’t—”
