The car sat idly in the parking lot, its engine still purring like a distressed cat in heat. The headlights made two neat circles against the aged brick of the courthouse. Its grout had been power washed when the weather showed the slightest sign of warming. The grass was painted over with a dark green and the rose bushes had been snipped of any dead vegetation.
That had been months ago- and the air was heavy with the offset of autumn. Davina Sloan cracked a window and shut off the music in the Mercedes. She liked to listen to the dull sound of drops sliding from leaves, and the occasional pounding of the music from another vehicle as it passed. The tires would pick up whatever moisture was still against asphalt.
She watched the sky as her mother climbed the large and looming steps up to her office, her pencil skirt miraculously looking undisturbed in the post-storm wind. Her deep auburn locks were flowing and Davina tried to remember a time that her mother didn't look like a politician. When she would wear sweatpants and an old hoodie.
There were pictures of her third birthday party; the old Polaroid's were brown with age, but the two of them sat at a paint-stained table. The walls in the kitchen were coated in a marigold yellow, little flowers decorated the dishtowels and cups. There was a cake that her aunt had fashioned out of white mix and royal icing. And her mother smiled wildly while Davina shoved a mouthful of frosting against her lips with chubby fingers.
If not for those pictures, Kandice Sloan would be cold to her. She looked tired; those brilliant blue eyes of hers had somehow faded with age to a dull gray. She was the prettiest in the courthouse, among men with white comb-overs and wrinkled suits that smelled of liquor and sweat, and oh so much desperation. But to Davina Sloan, her mother was a separate entity obsessed with winning.
Davina was a spitting image of her mother.
She let out a sigh and watched as her breath caught in front of her. The first sign of fall. The town of Oak Hollow had decorated with fake pumpkins staked into the ground and scarecrows that were stuffed with old hay that rotted away like the prospect of sun tanning. The rest of the world was late, but the rest of the world didn't matter.
Kandice had given her a weak smile and a squeeze of the knee before promising her that they would head home after she dropped some paperwork off at the office. Davina thumbed the manila folder and read the neatly printed labels; City Ordinance. Rehabilitation A.
Davina imagined naively that the 'A' stood for Apples, though it was probably something far more technical than the slowly dying orchards that lined every inch of the town. Once covered in lush green leaves and round fruit that couldn't be more tempting if a red diamond serpent spoke through dripping jowls.
They were dead now. Leaving behind bare bark and empty canopies of stretching wood fingers. There were legends about old farmers taking revenge, of their angered spirits stepping through hissing grass and aiming a shotgun right between the eyes as if she were a buck that was foaming at the mouth.
In her intense silence, she had lost track of the world around her. The way her mother's office was lit up in gold, just like those little flowers in photos filed away, spilling onto the pavement. She watched her silhouette as she moved. There was a woman locking up the café across the street- she dropped her keys with a clang and reached with grabby fingers to retrieve them. A couple walked their dog along the post office, situated parallel to the courthouse.
And then there was a scream. Something that came from the center of someone's chest and echoed so easily against the wet pavement. A shard of glass cutting close to quiet air. Davina felt her skin darken with the coolness of the night as she pushed open the car door, the mechanics hissing at her for leaving the keys in the ignition.
It had been the kind of cry that made her blood run cold and mind teeter off into nothing particular at all. The kind that made her stop caring about the mud that would coat the bottom of her shoes or the way her mother would slide down the cement steps, shouting at her to stop.
Davina Sloan dashed across the parking lot and didn't mind the yellow lines that had been repainted in order to make the building look friendlier. Past the labeled parking spaces and the newly planted sod, and past the rose bushes that were trilling with thorns.
The woman, the one that had been across the street at the café, wasn't far behind her. She had muddied her white shoes and her shirt that carried a logo of pine trees was stained with fallen drops of water. The two of them made eye contact, and god, it gave Davina comfort as they slowed to a stop right between the two looming structures.
When she was younger there was a fence connecting the two and a little park. Nothing more than a swing set that was made of old wood. Too many people got hurt and went after the post office and the officials at the courthouse before the city tore it down and got rid of the fence too; nothing but fake grass and an empty flowerbed now.
"Call an ambulance," A man spoke, voice tight. There was a well behaved golden retriever by his side, brown eyes alert at the new presence. He had a leather leash wrapped around his hand twice. "Please someone"
"I've got it." The waitress said, fishing for her phone but producing her keys first.
Davina was quiet, staring down at the man's wife, or maybe it was his sister. They had similar features but it was dark and she decided that she didn't' quite know what they were. Tears streaked already wet cheeks as she cradled something, someone, in her arms. There was blood, potent, and smelling of scratched iron.
"Hi, yes, we're on Grand and 7th the courthouse." Her words felt far away "There's been an accident."
The man interrupted "A body."
"A body." She corrected gravely "a kid. I don't think he's breathing- he's been here for a long time."
How could they tell? Was he cold? Anyone would be if they had braved a storm like this one out here all alone. He couldn't be more than six yet his eyes were old and cloudy. The woman was rocking him back and forth and she couldn't see his chest rise- not even once.
His skin was dark and his clothes were soaked through with mud, lips slightly parted and blue. Davina searched for a wound, a gunshot, or maybe even the evidence of a stabbing but it was inky and the moon had ducked under a cloud. Still- she could recognize him. He had been mutilated, a symbol carved into soft skin above his eyes, blood dripping like melted wax, solidified in the cold.
"They're on their way," The waitress lowered her phone and took in the same scene Davina just had, "Jesus Christ- it's that kid isn't it?"
No one answered, but there was no need to. Everyone had seen Miles Kovach somewhere, be it the news or the hundreds of posters that were tacked up around the city. They blew in the wind and were folded under windshield wipers while a car sat at a meter. Pinned to bulletin boards and tacked up in the very café that she had come from.
"I heard a scream,"
Her mother commanded the attention of the situation like a hurricane. All-encompassing and captivating with destruction as she overtook the scene. The lowly couple with the cute dog who cradled the boy like he still had a spark of life. The waitress that looked tired and smelled of coffee grounds and sweat. And her own daughter who looked green at the sight of blood.
Davina could read the expression on her mother's face. It was the same look that she got when she had snuck out with a few friends and vanished for hours with enough alcohol in her system to keep her strung out until the next morning. A PR Nightmare. A campaign dampener. Visit Oak Hollow, we murder children here.
There was a distant sound of sirens coming from the nearest station, howling like a beacon. She glanced back before breathing in evenly. "I have to make a phone call if you'll excuse me. Davina, go back to the car."
"Mom-"
"That wasn't a question. Go."
Davina bit her tongue until it stung. She felt the heat in her cheeks and the cold of the night all at once. The scent of decay was thick in her lungs. Kandice was calm and collected and she chalked it up to adrenaline, or maybe even shock because that was all she was feeling.
She felt like she knew Miles, though she had never met him or his family in passing. They had held candlelight vigils to keep spirits high. The Kovach's combed every inch of the dead woods and the city that was entrapped between them. She couldn't imagine, in her stalk back to the open car, that they didn't' search here too.
Davina watched and listened until bright red lights were reflecting from the pavement and a black unmarked van showed up. The man inside was used to seeing dead bodies; not the kind that were made to look alive, but the kind that had been struck down by a strange act of God.
Even he had to peel purple gloves away from his hands and sit on the courthouse steps to collect himself. He took deep and heaving breaths and didn't mind the cold wetness that soaked through his pants.
She tore her Velcro attention from the stranger as the driver side door opened and her mother slid in fluently. She started the engine again and rolled the windows up until they were sealed in silence, shoving her phone into the middle where a cup of coffee should be.
"Let's skip cooking dinner tonight," Kandice said once they had driven from the courthouse parking lot and onto the main road. Davina felt the curious eyes of the town bore into them, flashing to the newly strung caution tape. "We can get some takeout, it'll be easier."
For who? Davina wondered. If they weren't to cook then it would just force some teenager with bad acne and a pension for avoiding hand washing to fry up some burgers and drop frozen potatoes into a bat of bubbling grease.
"Thank you, but I'm not hungry." She said.
Her mother let out a deep sigh and tightened her fingers against the tan interior until they looked white. "You have to eat something, sweetie."
"Forgive me for not having an appetite"
Davina could feel the shift in the air, her own arms crossed over her chest. Her skin felt damp and so did her hair despite the rain having dulled to a stop hours ago. They fell in stringy red strands and clung to her cheeks like static. Her mother pulled the car into an overnight diner, a few block letters dripping from the sign, decorated early for Halloween. Food to Die For.
She put the car into park, pushing the gear with a dark force. But again, that woman who was so quick to anger sparked with the same exhaustion that Davina had become so accustomed to. "Davina, dear, I know something like this is shocking, but you can't quite deal with it when there's no food in your system. Food helps you think, so get out of the car. We're getting dinner."
"Shocking? Mom that was a dead body! A dead little boy, and now you want me to go into a restaurant and pretend that everything is okay when it's clearly not?" Davina lowered her voice to a dejected whisper, a small ghost within herself "you saw the same thing I did. What the hell was that?"
Kandice stared through the spotted window of the diner, watching as a display case filled with pie turned amongst a busboy and a waitress rolling silver. "it was something we can't change, so yes, Davina. I expect you to get out of the car and eat with me like we are a normal family that can function even in the face of this. Collect yourself and join me when you're ready."
The woman had a look of annoyance on her face as she stared at her own daughter and pulled the keys from the car. She exited, mumbling about finding a table, and elegantly climbed another set of steps; this time shaded in neon lights from a flashing sign that flickered and rotted with age.
Davina wanted to scream, scream so loud that it shattered the windows of the fancy Mercedes and made all the alarms sound. Like a tornado that was raging through a small town too far gone for comfort. Instead, she ran both hands through her hair and felt the way that they stung from the cold.
Scream, she wouldn't.