Page 2 of In Her Wake
“Do you know where she is right now?Which property?”
Another pause, longer this time.“Let me check her calendar.”He heard the click of computer keys.“She had the Henderson place at one, then the Blackwell cottage at three.Is everything alright?”
No, everything was not alright.There was a mannequin wearing his wife’s clothes sitting at his kitchen table, and his wife wasn’t answering her phone.
“I’m not sure,” Harry said carefully.“She’s not answering her cell.Could you try reaching her?Have her call me as soon as possible?”
“Of course, Mr.Powell.I’ll try her right away.”
Harry thanked her and ended the call.He looked back at the mannequin, half-expecting it to have moved, to have shifted position or turned its head toward him.But it remained exactly as before, frozen in its imitation of life.
After a few minutes, a sharp ring startled him, and he nearly dropped the phone."Hello?"
“Mr.Powell?”Carol’s voice was hesitant, careful.“I tried Marjory’s phone.She’s not answering.”
A heaviness settled in his chest.“Thank you, Carol.Please, if you hear from her, tell her to call home.”
He hung up and leaned against the counter, the cool surface biting into his back as he tried to think.He needed to do something, but what?Call the police?And say what?My wife isn’t home, and someone left a mannequin that looks like her in our kitchen?They’d laugh him off the line.Or worse, they’d think he was having some kind of breakdown.
But he couldn’t just stand here waiting.He couldn’t leave that thing sitting at his kitchen table.
Harry moved to the front door, stepping outside to see if any neighbors were around.The Wilsons’ house across the street was quiet, their car gone.The Johnsons next door were both at work until evening.No witnesses, no one who might have seen anything unusual.
Back inside, he pulled out his phone again and tried Marjory’s number.Straight to voicemail this time, not even a ring.The battery might be dead.Or someone might have turned it off.
The house felt different now, the familiar spaces tainted by the presence of that thing in the kitchen.Harry moved cautiously through each room, checking closets, looking behind doors, half-expecting to find more mannequins, or some other horror lurking in the corners of his home.
Nothing seemed disturbed.Nothing missing.Just the mannequin, sitting there like an accusation.
He returned to the kitchen doorway, studying it from a distance.Who would do this?How had they gotten into the house?The doors had been locked when he arrived home, no windows broken, no signs of forced entry.
Someone with a key?The list was short.Marjory’s mother had one, but she lived in Florida now.Their daughter, Kayla, but she was away at college in Chicago.The housekeeper who came every other Thursday—today wasn’t her day.
Or maybe it was someone Marjory knew.Someone she had let in.Someone who had...
Harry couldn’t complete the thought.The possibilities branched out before him, each darker than the last.He stared at the mannequin for a long moment, then made his decision.He moved to the counter, keeping his distance from the table, and picked up his phone again.Marjory might be in danger.He needed help.Professional help.
His thumb hovered over the keypad.Nine-one-one.Three simple digits.
But what would he say when they answered?
CHAPTER ONE
When Jenna Graves crested another hill on the winding county road in her police cruiser, the Ozark Plateau stretched before her.For four days now, she had methodically combed these back roads, searching for a farmhouse that might exist only in her dreams—white walls, red roof, weathered barn.The phantom image of her sister Piper working those distant fields drove her forward, even as the rational part of her mind cautioned against hope born from spectral visions.
“This is insane,” she muttered to herself.Twenty years of searching, and now she was chasing ghosts through the countryside—literally.Patricia Gaines, a dead girl who had visited her in dreams, had told her where to find Piper.Find the scarecrow at the crossroads, she had said.
Alongside the road, fields undulated in gentle waves of green and gold beneath the September sun.She'd been driving since dawn, and now it was after 2:00 in the afternoon—another day of leave from her duties as Sheriff.Jake Hawkins, her deputy and friend, had covered for her without question, understanding when she'd explained her newest lead.He didn't call it crazy, even though she knew that it was.
The road curved ahead, revealing a weathered sign: IRVINGTON – POP.843.Another small town to check out.She’d already crossed off Millbrook, Coopersville, and Dunham.The radio crackled with intermittent updates from dispatch, reminders of the job she’d left behind in Trentville.Jenna reached over and turned the volume down.She needed to focus.
As she approached Irvington, fields of late corn and soybeans formed patchwork patterns on each side of the road.She slowed as she neared an intersection, the four-way stop marked by faded signs pointing toward Irvington, Trentville, Clendon, and Beckford.
And there, at the nearest corner of a fallow field, stood a scarecrow.
Jenna’s breath caught.She pulled over sharply, gravel crunching beneath the tires of her cruiser as she braked.The scarecrow wasn’t unusual in itself—a weather-beaten figure with a burlap head, straw spilling from the sleeves of a flannel shirt, perched on a wooden cross.But the position—at a crossroads—sent a jolt through her.
“Find the scarecrow at the crossroads,” she whispered, echoing Patricia’s words from her dream.
